Enter Palm
p. 145 · Read in the full issue
Fiji Plans To
Oil Market
Fiji has plans to enter the com etitive, but lucrative palm oil market, hould present experiments on the rovono Flats, Vanua Levu, prove iccessful, £5tg.250,000 will be in ested to create a new industry.
CHE Fiji Development Company, subsidiary of the Commonwealth previously Colonial) Development Corporation, in co-operation with the )cal Department of Agriculture, is ndertaking the pilot scheme at Jovono. Funds are coming from ie CDC and know-how from the gricultural experts.
The project is, necessarily long srm, for it will be at least four ears before a decision can be made bout the commercial possibilities of tie plan.
The palm seed will arrive in Fiji rom Malaya in December, and ;ermination and pre-nursery work yill start the same month.
The oil palm tree has been grown n various parts of Fiji and on various soil types, but only on a
small scale. It has been shown that the oil palm will grow under the prevailing climatic conditions of Fiji.
Oil palms come into production in the fourth year from planting. Ex pensive factory installations are needed for the extraction of the oil.
The nuts, in bunches weighing be tween 30 and 50 lb are about the size of a walnut. The oil is used
largely in the manufacture of soap and margarine. The kernel, after extraction of the oil, is used as food for cattle.
The CDC already operates com mercial plantations of oil palm in Malaya and North Borneo. Should Fiji be able to enter the trade in four or five years she will as her major competitors West Africa, Malaya, Indonesia and Borneo.
New Stamps. Seven
new postage stamps, to complete a definitive issue of 15, will be issued in Fiji on Decem ber 3. Their denomina tions are 1d, 11/2d 2½d,½d, 3d, 1/6, 2/- and 5/-.
The three lowest denominations feature the Annigoni portrait of the Queen; the 3d stamp portrays the Queen in uniform as Colonel-in-Chief of the Brigade of Guards; the theme of the 1/6 stamp is the 180th meridian; the 2/- stamp depicts a wild Fijian mountain orchid; and the 5/- stamp features an orange dove found only on Taveuni.