Radiek-Ah DeFreitas belongs to a growing clique of budding young Guyanese entrepreneurs who are lifting the well-worn trade of agro-processing out of the antiquated setting in which it had been for decades and into a business setting that can make it a game-changer for up-and-coming investors.
Time was (and that was not too many moons ago) when agro-processing manifested itself in ‘drippy’ tamarind syrup ‘packaged’ in less than sturdy brown wrapping paper and spices comprising leaves and bark of one sort or another offered by grocery shops in neatly fashioned paper funnels. Those days are fast receding in the distance as agro processors like Radiek-Ah bring ever higher standards to the sector, under pressure from an ever more demanding market.
At 28, she bridges the gap between what went before and the contemporary. Sitting at the feet of her mother Sharon, blending the various seasonings and sauces that were sold in the municipal market, she was not yet a teenager when she began to see agro-processing as a likely part of her future. As she grew older, she was already blending her own seasonings and marketing them mostly in Linden, her ambitions as far as product quality was concerned in those days, limited to the standards that the market would accept. That is not to say that she did not continually dream of taking her enterprise to another level.
