Fiji Has Stars And Crowns

Has a Trade Tobacco Factory, but—

Anything New Guinea can do, Fiji can do better. That seems be the theme of the story sent in this month from Suva, following : publication last month of facts about Madang’s new stick-tobacco '.us try.

Iji there are two factories in- Iging in the sophisticated jn stry of making cigarettes, bably what Fiji does not 3, however, is the place stick, :ade, tobacco has in New la. well as a smoke it is a im of trade, as the name im- Until very recently —if not to a degree—one did not give cook-boy money to go to the ng “bung”, but trade tobacco he exchanged for your break eggs and lunchtime salad . this tobacco in sticks is a upon which the New Guinea is a connoisseur; Churchill not be more fussy about his than the NG native is about ade-tobacco. s a pretty fair guess that it iier to make a cigarette to than it is to produce success the Christmas-pudding mix hat is trade tobacco.

Cigarettes for All ’iji the output of the cigarette es is not for native con on, of course. All-comers in noke the two brands manu ?d locally. Why not? They ade by the two well-known Carreras and W. D. & H. O.

The Wills factory was opened n late 1955; Carreras in May cigarettes are cheaper than ;ed ones—9d for 10 now, since ji government increased the duty in April. Previously, in :hat the new industry should J established, the Govern held excise to a minimum.

April, the price of cigarettes information and pictures applied by Carreras, their machinery came from d and so did the managerial r rom the beginning the ven as a success and the factory work overtime all the first ► fill orders. 3 1956 premises have been :d and now T take up the of the company’s site at Bay. More machines have istalled. nally the staff consisted of in and seven girls. There are s men and 40 girls working factory. The majority are but there are Indian, Chinese

and part-European girls together with some from other Pacific Islands Territories.

All races get on well together and have quickly adapted them selves to their new way of life.

Careful training schemes introduced by the company have resulted in native staff being able to tend the

high speed automatic machinery in volved in the large scale production of cigarettes.

The social side of modem in dustrial life has not been forgotten.

There is a canteen in the factory where the staff have their tea breaks and their mid-day meal.

The staff have formed their own Sports and Social Club.

In 1957 Carreras Limited intro duced another cigarette Cina manufactured from tobacco grown within the Colony and experiments have been carried out on the grow ing and manufacture of local to bacco.

The Wills cigarette is sold under the brand-name of Star; and Carreras is called Crown.

TOP: A Fijian employee weighing tobacco at the start of the blending process LOWER: Girls tendi ng t he c igarette-making machines, each of which produces 350 cigarettes per minute" which is an awful lot of cigarettes in an eight-hour shift. After the cigarettes are made they go to the packing section where other automatic machines put the cigarettes in their dis* tinctive packets.

Photos: Stinsons.