Turning Coconuts

Into Money

What F. W. Burke Did at Orokolo

Ji/JANY people nave neard of that * enterprising establishment in Papua called Orokolo industries , wnere soap is made and engineering jobs are under taken; Out not many know the interest ing story behind it.

The establishment is practically closed down “for the duration"; and Mr. F. W.

Bur he is now a sergeant in AHOAU. He was in Sydney recently; and , at our invitation, he described the circumstances which led to the organisation of his new industries. Here is the story. — IT was about 1932. You were publishing articles in the “PIM” about planters having “all their eggs in one casket,” and you were suggestmg experiments in tung oil and castor oil. At tnat time the grip of Unilever was just being felt.

Planters were a bit confused. Some blamed “whale oil,” some BP’s for the unstable copra market, but a glance at Unilever profits was the best indication.

I tried castor oil, and had excellent crops; but I found that the crushers and the agents reaped all the profit from that. So I decided to try crushing my own castor seed, and I sent to England for the machinery for preparing the cas tor seed. I also wrote to the agriculture departments of various countries of South America, and also to Malaya—in fact, I spent about £2O on pamphlets and correspondence concerning oil mills, I also had a little personal experience in the Malay States, and I decided that not only would I crush castor seed, but copra as well. I tried to get the planters of Papua interested in establishing an oil mill in Port Moresby, to handle all the copra of Papua. But copra was a reasonable price at that time, and most of the planters would not believe the price would go any lower. I had to modify my ideas considerably.

I sent to England for a small copra crusher and I started to build up a fac tory at Orokolo. It took about seven months for the machinery to come out from England. By that time, copra had slumped again, and copra-planters were beginning to feel the pinch. I needed two more presses; but, as these were £4OO each, and copra down to £9 a ton, there was no money to spare.

So I started to build my own presses.

It was a long job, and it was almost two years before I had designed and built a satisfactory press.

Then came the problem of making soap from pure coconut oil. Many had tried; but either the soap was too hard, of a nasty colour, or it had an excess of free caustic soda.

I learned that a South American firm had a contract to make soap from pure coconut oil for the USA Navy. After many months of trying, I got the name of the firm which was making the soap, and also the name of the firm which had supplied the soap-making plant. Thus, I got sufficient information to put me on the right track.

After a few experiments, I produced a snow-white soap of good texture, and free from caustic soda. It would lather just as freely in salt or brackish as in fresh water.

It was not on the market very long before the demand for the soap became far in excess of the capacity of the plant I had, so I started to build more soap presses, soap slabbers, cutters, etc.

All the copra that I could produce, and

buy from the natives, was being crushed and turned into soap and cattle cake.

I was just beginning to smile at the Unilever Combine, and getting the fac tory on a paying and full production basis, when the Japs threw in their lot with the Axis, and so we had to give them our attention.

Perhaps, when this is all over and we settle back on the plantations, the plant ers will put in a decent oil mill before the combines get full control again.

Lieutenant John Brown, of Vatukoula Mines, Fiji, is in a prisoner-of-war hos pital near Naples, Italy.