Industry Booms

Fiji's New Button

THE button-factory, established in

Levuka, Fiji, in 1953, is now producing 72,000 trochus-shell but

tons daily.

Mr. A. G. McCown, of Levuka, manager of Pacific Pearl Shell Pro ducts Ltd., which owns the factory, reports that the enterprise, using the most modern German machinery, is now prospering. As well as the daily output, 11 million blanks, ready for drilling and fashioning as re quired by buyers, are held in store.

There are orders on hand sufficient to keep the machinery running at present capacity for at least two years. Included in the 27 sizes of pearl-buttons being turned out, are some made from shell of a natural khaki colour to meet an Army order.

In addition to buttons there are also some interesting by-products being produced. The fine dust from the cutting and grinding opera tions, when mixed with explosives for gun ammunition, prevents or greatly reduces visible gun-flash, an important military use. Coarser grindings are sold as an iodine-rich fertiliser.

The cores from the centres of the cone-shaped trochus shells, after the button-blanks have been drilled from all over the outer sur face of the shells, are being sold to Cyprus to be made into neck laces, rosary beads, and artificial teeth.

The Levuka factory has machinery, not yet installed, for making terazzo tiles and sink-tops,

etc., from a mixture of plaster and shell-chips.

Markets for the factory’s products have been found in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Kenya and South Africa.

Together with one other modernly equipped button factory at Lautoka, owned by an Indian business man, Mr. B. D. Laksham, the Levuka factory has a temporary monopoly in the Colony under the Protected Industries Ordinance. So long as favourable tariffs permit the in dustry to export to Commonwealth countries with an advantage over Japan, this new Fiji industry should thrive.

A Fijian operator cutting blanks from a trochus shell at Mr. A. G. McCown’s Levuka factory. —Photo: Fiji Public Relations Office.

Some of the products of Mr. McCown’s factory. Below right is seen the trochus shell and the successive steps required to turn out the high-quality finished product.

Dark shell at top supplies khaki buttons. —Photo: Fiji Public Relations Office.