Fiji Pineapples Are

Lautoka Cannery

Will Close

Fiji Pineapples Are “Uneconomic”

WHEN the Colonial Sugar Refining

Company pineapple cannery

doses down at the end of the 1955-56 packing season, Fiji will be without I cannery for the first time in about i quarter century.

The announcement in March by ;he CSR that it intends closing lown its cannery at Lautoka, Fiji, las had a disquieting effect upon he commercial life of the com munity.

In the past twenty years Fiji has een little progress in extending the ange of its primary or secondary ndustries. Its eggs are still arried in too few baskets.

The quality of the Fiji canned ineapples was generally considered verseas to be excellent, and in New iealand, particularly, there was a ood demand.

A Fijian resident who recently impled Malayan pineapples in ondon said that in comparison ith the Fijian product they tasted like cooked turnips.”

On the production side, the com any had its own land. It had

workshops and engineers available at the sugar mill to carry out any repairs; it had chemists, soil con trol, and men well experienced in agriculture. It also had the raw sugar. As one business man des cribed the situation: “If the CSR cannot make a go of it, nobody can.”

Apart from the announcement that it found the industry “un economic”, the company has given no detailed reasons why it will cease operations with the 1955-56 pack.

Probably one factor in the de cision is that the industry is merely seasonal, and except for a few months of the year the capital re presented by the idle canning plant is unproductive, A deciding factor may have been the failure of CSR experiments in pineapple growing on Vanua Levu. These had been going on for some time, but were abandoned as unsuccessful last year.

If pineapple growing in this area had been possible, this may have taken the place of the area ad jmning the CSR pineapple planta tions at Nadi which would have been the logical area of expansion had it not been for the fact that the land was used for establishing Fiji’s international airport.

The successful pineapple planta tions and cannery established in Ovalau by Mr. A. G. McCown in the early 30’s were later sold to a British company, soon ran into diffi

culties and closed down.

A similar late overtook several other companies which entered the industry. Nonetheless, it has shocked Fiji to learn that the powerful CSR company, after an interest in the industry extending back almost 20 years, is also preparing to quit the field.