Carpenters' Suva
p. 19 · Read in the full issue
Factory Is Australian News
Canberra, Jan. 30.
AUSTRALIA has just become aware that Fiji in future will have a large scale coconut oil factory of its own.
Mr. P. R. Wilkins, Federal secretary of the Associated Chambers of Commerce of Australia, said here to-day, that a large factory was almost completed at Walu Bay, Suva. It was planned as a major industrial enterprise for Fiji, he said, and although the factory would probably pot be in full operation until the end of this year, enough of the machinery had been assembled to give a °uod indication of the future scope of the enterprise.
Its primary object was the production of coconut oil in its purest form—colour less, odorless vegetable fat, suitable for use as lard—canned and ready for ex port. At the same time, copra by products would be produced. The most important was copra meal for stock and poultry. Machinery for the factory had been imported from the United King dom and Australia.
What Mr. Wilkins did not say was that the factory is owned by W. R.
Carpenter & Co., originally an Austra lian firm with its largest interests in Australia and New Guinea. Due to crippling taxation in Australia, Mr.
Ward’s heresy-hunt among the Big Firms, and the unsympathetic treatment of private enterprise generally by the Australian Government, Carpenters have gradually shifted the centre of their ac tivities away from Australia and her Territories and towards Canada and the South Pacific.