Cane—Peanuts—Passion

New Industries In Papua-

N. Guinea

Cane—Peanuts—Passion Fruit

P. MORESBY, April 4.

A PROMISING new industry has been started at Port Moresby by Mr. and Mrs. R. J. Prior, who have set up the first unit of a factory and are manufacturing cane furniture from “lawyer” vine.

Mr. Prior had a cane furniture factory in Sydney before the war, and after some years with the Administration in the post-war period he decided to return to the cane furniture business.

The firm is known as Haydin’s Rattan Products, and Mr. Prior has trained a team of native rattan craftsman. Suites and individual chairs and tables are being manu factured, based on modern designs, and the output is offering stiff com petition to cane furniture imported from the Far East.

Australian manufacturers are showing interest in obtaining sup plies of lawyer vine for furniture making, and the first shipments have already gone South.

The venture is providing a new

source of cash income for coastal natives, who bring in canoe-loads of vine from points along the south west coast. Mr. Prior plans to ex tend his output to bamboo furni ture.

Going south on this Bulolo are 20 tons of peanuts, consigned by various growers at Wau. They will

be sold on the open market in Syd- Aiso on the Bulolo are another seven tons of passion fruit pulp fpr Cottees Passiona Limited, grown in the Highlands.

New Timber Industry

Five members of the staff of Com monwealth New Guinea Timber Limited (which is the Common wealth-Bulolo Gold Co. formed to work New Guinea’s stands of High land pine) have been sent to Canada and the United States to get the latest information on modern methods of manufacturing plywood. They are Messrs. R. Gay, Senior, J. Sneddon, E. Gibb, J.

Leslie and R. Weedan.

The construction of the plywood factory is well on the way at Bulolo, and good progress has been made on the ordering of machinery. The mill may start producing plywood next December.