Fiji

Candle-Nut Oil

Interesting Enterprise in Fiji

Suva, Aug. 1.

A MELBOURNE company, Industrial Oils (Fiji), Ltd., with a nominal capital of £40,000, has commenced in Fiji experimental operations on the well known candle-nut (lumbang) of the tropics, from which it is planned to extract lumbang oil.

Plant is arriving in Suva this month from Australia and elsewhere, and is being installed in the Pearce building; and candle-nuts are being collected wherever they can be found, and brought to Suva for crushing. The world is desperately short of paint oils; and, for that purpose, the lumbang is said to rank close to the product of the tung tree, to which it is botanically allied. Operations in Fiji are in charge of Mr. H. A. Mitchell, of Melbourne. „ .. .

The lumbang tree (or candle-nut) is widely scattered over most of the tropical islands of the Pacific, in more than one variety. It has such a large content of fairly volatile oil that the nuts can be strung together by natives on a w:ck, and used as a torch, or candle. It often has attracted the attention of men seeking for oil; but the intensely hard shell (the size of a large walnut), and the way it is packed within the shell, as well as the fact that the trees are widely scattered have defeated all attempts at exploita tion.

Mr. Mitchell calculates that, by weight, 67 per cent, of the nut is shell and 33 per cent, kernel; and that, of the kernel, 65 per cent, is oil, of which 60 per cent, can be extracted by special machinery re cently devised for the purpose. The resi

dual cake is claimed to have high value as a fertiliser.

The promoters claim that the oil has so many good qualities as a drying oil for paints and varnishes, and for lighting, that is should find a profitable market, under all conditions. Critics say that its present promising market will become re stricted when better-established oils return in force after the war; and that it is impossible to profitably handle the raw material (candle-nuts) until the nuts are grown in plantations closely sur rounding the crushers. It will take from four to five years to bring such planta tions to steady production.

The Fiji enterprise is being watched with sympathy and eagerness, and the Government is helping the promoters by assisting in the collection of the nuts now growing wild in widely scattered locali

ties.-

R.W.R.