[?] Fiji, Australia

Fall in Sugar Production [?] Fiji, Australia Adverse Weather to Blame

HHE Colonial Sugar Refining Com- L pany expects that this season’s sugar crop in Australia and iji will be smaller than average, ue to the adverse weather condi ons prevailing during the growing ;ason in the two countries.

Raw sugar production in 1951 in ustralia is expected to be about to.ooo tons—about 200,000 tons be iw average. The fall is the result : too much rain during the early art of the cane’s growth, followed y drought conditions more re jntly. It was hoped to produce a dllion tons in 1951.

Australia’s export of sugar will robably be only 165,000 tons — le lowest figure for many years.

In Fiji the same weather pattern ■too much rain, then not sufficient has had the same effect as in Aus alia and the Fiji mills are ex acted to produce about 110,000 tons sugar this year which is 35 per Tit. below mill capacity and about 1,000 tons below previous peak •oduction.

This fall in production is bad business for Australia and Fiji,, both of which are anxious to fill their whole export quota in face of growing competition from Cuba.

Back in May, Australian pro ducers complained that an agree ment signed between Canada and

Cuba “was damaging and most in defensible.” They believed that Canada, which previously got all her sugar from Empire countries, including Australia and Fiji, would not have signed the agreement if the United Kingdom government had not encouraged it.