Retva Sugar

Scheme Ends —At Lai

From a Correspondent I SUVA, January 30 A forlorn hope from the st£

the Fiji Sugar Milling Co., Lt

has decided to wind up its affai The company was formed 1958, about 18 months after 1

CSR Company, Ltd., planned!

close its Nausori mill.

THE farmers of the Rewa areaj by Mr. Vishnu Deo, then a le ing Indian MLC, and against the vice of expert opinion, decided ! sugar would still be crushed ini area. With a flourish of trumpet company with a nominal capital £1,000,000 was formed, with I shares at £25 each.

The company promoters, ignoi Government and CSR advice I cane growing had never been < nomic in the wet zone of Fiji, sou other advice, which led them to ahead. But capital was hard to f especially amon? the farmers, in s of determined efforts to sell sha Even had a mill been built and c growing started again the comp would then have had to fight fo share of Fiji’s quota.

Faced with all these obstacles directors in November called i, shareholders together and put ; position squarely before them. J this time the Eve Commission made a report on the sugar indu in the Colony, and their report 1 not favourable to the re-establishn of the industry in the Rewa area.] On top of that there was 1 enough capital to build a mill caps of crushing 1,000 tons of cane a ( There were two alternatives: O Wind up the company; or • Use the capital in some other dustry which might be condu to an improved financial post for Rewa farmers.

The shareholders went away consider the alternatives, and retur in January to tell the directors wind up the company.

Now the farmers can go back their rice and other crops wit! the nagging thought in their m: that the much-easier-to-grow crof sugar might some day return to Re