Button-Making In
p. 20 · Read in the full issue
Fiji
New Industry at Levuka
WE reported, some months ago, that Mr. A. G. McGown, of Levuka, had taken steps to establish a button-making industry in Fiji. It is now formally an nounced that Mr. McGowan is the managing director of Pacific Pearl Shell Products Ltd.; that the Co, has installed 18 button-making machines in a factory in Levuka; and that the plant is capable of making, each day, 72,000 buttons out of trochus shell.
The company will buy trochus shell from the Fijians, and will be capable of handling 400 tons per annum. A staff of 20 people will work under the direction of a technician from the United States.
Before World War 11, most button-making from South Pacific shell was done in Czecho-Slovakia and Japan, Since the war, the shell has gone mostly to United States. It is believed that, if there is efficiency in the factory, the new Levuka enterprise should be able to dispose profitably of all its pro ducts.
If it ran at full capacity for 300 days per annum, the Levuka factory might produce over 20 millions of buttons. That seems a startling number of buttons. But there are 2,000 millions of people in the world, and if each of them lost five buttons a year (and many of them can do a lot better than that) there would be a call each year for 400 millions of buttons.