A highly diversified Ling Hang Investment Development Co Ltd plans to venture into waste management and currently holding high-level talks with officials to build a recycling plant in Phnom Penh.

Speaking to The Post on Monday, its Chief Executive Officer George Chao said large amount of garbage is churned out in cities like Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville – where population growth is immense.

“We are focusing on clean energy project and concentrating in Phnom Penh to build the first plant to recycle disposed waste to produce energy, and we will be creating a clean environment."

“About 5,000 tonnes of garbage per day is enough to convert into electricity. The project is still at discussion stage and the government has offered the land."

“Discussions with government officials and garbage collectors are still in progress. We expect to start operations by mid-2019,” Chao said.

Waste generated by businesses and households continue to grow in fast-expanding townships.

According to the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, about 10,000 tonnes of solid waste were produced daily or in total about 3.65 million tonnes last year.

Phnom Penh alone produced nearly 3,000 tonnes of garbage per day, while Sihanoukville recorded 600 tonnes and Siem Reap with about 400 tonnes daily.

Chao said the SUS Environment, a leading solid waste incinerator supplier and developer of integrated municipal solid waste management based in China has expressed interested to work with Ling Hang on the project.

But discussions are still at a preliminary stage, he added.

The group based in Preah Sihanouk Province is also collaborating with JC International Airlines and launched six direct flights to connect China and Cambodia two months ago.

“We have started six directly flights from China by joining with JC Airlines, as we should say we hired planes from JC and we will open another few routes from other major cities in next two years."

“We still use JC Airlines B330 for the time being and there are more than 30 direct flights per week between Sihanoukville and six major cities of China,” he added.

Currently, the six cities are Shenzhen, Hanjin, Xi’an, Chengdu, Tiantian (in November) and Hefei.

“There are lot of Chinese (nationals) coming to Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville and the flights are 90 percent full,” he added.

The company is also in the process of constructing a training academy in Sihanoukville to train Cambodians for the hospitality industry.

“There is need to train staff for the services industry as there is a great demand from hotels and casinos. The academy will focus on training young workers in handling food and customer services, and will offer a one year certificate course.

“We are expecting the academy to operate at the end of 2018 and it will train about 3,000 students yearly. This will help those in rural areas to find jobs,” said Chao.