Industry
p. 10 · Read in the full issue
New Guinea’s New Industry Good Future for Cocoa Producers
IT is expected that the New Guinea Administration, supported by the Com monwealth Government, will take advan tage of the present providential opppr tunity to soundly establish the cocoa in dustry in the Mandated Territory.
Originally, New Guinea was exclusively a copra producing country—and, if it had remained so, it would be on the bread-line to-day. Fortunately, the rich gold industry was established, and the large revenues from that source have kept the Territory prosperous and pro gressive.
The New Guinea copra industry, how ever, is feeling the unfavorable conditions created by the war, and the coconut planters are ready to give attention to any alternative which may be suggested.
Several years ago a few enterprising planters began to grow cocoa. They got little encouragement. Australian confec tionery manufacturers did not wish to alter their processes and formulae to allow them to handle a new kind of cocoa bean —they wanted to keep to the well-known Accra product.
Mr. Norman Nelson, of Messrs. Nelson and Robertson, Ltd., Sydney merchants, took a personal interest in the matter and, acting as the agent for New Guinea cocoa planters, fought for years a discouraging and almost single-handed battle to get New Guinea cocoa beans recognised. He was slowly winning out, when the war came; and Australian confectionery manufacturers suddenly found that they could not get their usual Accra supplies, and turned with new interest to the New Guinea cocoa beans.
Quite suddenly. New Guinea beans were in sharp demand, and the price rose from about £26 or £2B per ton to around £3B per ton. Mr, Nelson has in formed the "P.1.M.” that there is now in Australia an eager market for every cocoa bean that can be sent from New Guinea.
He is anxious that the New Guinea cocoa planting industry should be encouraged, and he is actively assisting in discussions between manufacturers in Australia and planters in New Guinea, so that the latter may understand the requirements of the former.
A few years ago, only a few consign ments of cocoa beans came out of New Guinea. To-day, the production is ap proximately 200 tons per annum, and it is growing rapidly. The quality is equal to Trinidad; but, for Australian market ing purposes, it has been taken as being equal to the lo ver grade—namely, Accra.
Warm praise for this development must be given to Mr. George Murray, the long sighted Director of Agriculture in New Guinea. He always has been a believer in cocoa production in New Guinea, and it was he who encouraged one of his most promising young lieutenants, Mr. Green, to go to the British School of Tropical Agriculture in Trinidad, West Indies, and make a special study of cocoa culture, for the benefit of New Guinea planters. Mr.
Green came back, about 1934, an en thusiastic believer in the possibility of cocoa culture in New Guinea; and, since then, he has been tireless in assisting New Guinea planters to a better under standing of the industry.
Now, everything is in favour of its establishment. There is an eager market
in Australia: the price offered is high and profitable; many planters in New Guinea have already experimented with the crop, and understand how to handle it; and the New Guinea Department of Agriculture is in a position to give all kinds of practical assistance.
The New Guinea Administration has available the rich revenues derived from the gold industry which it may use—and should use—for the sound establishment of a good primary industry like cocoa pro duction.