Confirel Discovery: Where Memory, Nature and Learning Meet in Kep
In his 2026 book Hope of Spring, Dr. Hay Ly Eang describes Confirel Discovery, the working plantation and ecological park in Kep that has grown, since it was first conceived in 2012, into one of the clearest expressions of Confirel's philosophy of circular, sustainable development.
The site sits at the foot of the Elephant Mountains, in the same Kampot-pepper growing region recognised by a Protected Geographical Indication since 2010. Alongside its pepper fields and processing workshops, Confirel Discovery was built as a walking path through the region's history and ecology in equal measure. Visitors pass a former railway line before reaching a lake that now fills a bomb crater left by the war, and a memorial stele honouring three foreign travellers, Jean-Michel Braquet, Mark Slater and David Wilson, who lost their lives during the Khmer Rouge years.
Further along, the path follows a fish-filled canal to a lake where Confirel protects endangered local turtles, and on to a semi-flooded bird sanctuary that shelters nesting colonies and, after dark, fireflies. Nearby, mango trees shade plantings of Kaempferia parviflora, the traditional "black ginger," in a small-scale demonstration of agroforestry: the trees' shade helps the plants grow, and the plants' roots enrich the soil in return.
At the heart of the site is the KEM "green factory" — a fermentation unit that runs without fuel, machinery or emissions, producing natural plant-extract concentrates through natural fermentation alone, surrounded by its own plantations of medicinal and aromatic plants.
Confirel Discovery has increasingly become an open-air school for young Cambodians, at a time when many are turning away from agriculture toward city life. Through on-site workshops and direct exchanges with Confirel's teams, visiting students learn how circular economy principles and sustainable resource management actually work on the ground, not as abstract ideas but as daily practice.
Walking the plantation with a French partner in February 2025, Dr. Hay summed up the philosophy the site is built to demonstrate: a model of "reasonable consumption" that shows intensive production and biodiversity can reinforce each other, rather than compete.