Fiji's Cigarette Industry

Business and

Development

Fiji's Cigarette Industry Is Expanding Fast

From Beryl Cates, in Suva In the last 10 years the annual cash value of produce grown in Fiji’s Sigatoka Valley has leapt from £3,000 to £300,000

IT is no coincidence that this year also marks the 10th anniversary of tobacco growing in Fiji and that the largest tobacco-growing area in the colony is the Sigatoka Valley.

The valley grows passionfruit, too, and there is no doubt that this crop has also contributed greatly to the incredible increase in produce values.

The first trial plots of tobacco were put down in 1956 at Lobau, 28 miles up the Sigatoka Valley.

Experimenters were the Fiji To bacco Company, an off-shoot of the British Australasian Tobacco Co.

Shortly after the company’s seed beds were established at Lobau, others were put down at the Department of Agriculture’s farm lower down the valley, and at the end of the first year results from both were announced as “most satisfactory”.

Big Cash Investment

Close on the heels of the Fiji To bacco Company came Carreras of Fiji Ltd., a subsidiary of Carreras Ltd. of the United Kingdom.

Carreras concentrated its efforts around the Nadi area.

Now, a decade later, the Fiji To bacco Company has invested £200,000 in its three curing stations in the va 11 e y—Lobau, Nalebaleba and Mavua; it has there 49 barns, stor age and grading sheds, a re-drying plant, as well as 12 employees’ cottages.

Carreras development officers blow smoke rings when asked about the size and value of their Nadi area holdings. “They’re big by any standards” is the cagey reply. They’ll tell you also tobacco is now the main cash crop in the Nadi area, and it is grown in the entire Vatukarasi- Balenabelo Valley and around the coastal belt from Sowi Bay to Tagaqi.

The Fiji Tobacco Company takes its tobacco from about 600 Sigatoka farmers who grow tobacco with gen eral farming. They are not specialists

and their holdings are roughly eight to 12 acres each, though only a small portion of each farm is devoted to tobacco.

Carreras on the other hand gets only part of its needs from individual farmers, and the remainder is grown on its own holdings.

Tobacco is a five-month crop which, while being one of the best paying crops in Fiji, requires constant care and attention throughout the entire growing period as well as at harvest time.

Because of its susceptibility to disease, farmers actually follow the procedure of washing their hands before going near their crop in the field. They also refrain from smok ing when near it, to protect the growing tobacco from any disease which could have found its way into the tobacco being smoked.

Tobacco suffers from many diseases

and it is particularly susceptible to eel-worm damage, the eel-worms be ing brought to the crop from streams and rivers and from other crops such as potatoes and tomatoes. The tiny eel-worm, which is invisible to the naked eye, enters the tobacco roots and causes it to form knobs.

Seedlings are transplanted at six weeks, and the plants until harvest time require constant attention to protect them from caterpillars, slugs, grasshoppers and cut worms.

Tobacco flowers which rob the plants of strength are removed at flowering time, and the plant grows to about 5 ft in height. The crop is considered ready for harvesting when leaves are slightly more brittle than usual and have a yellowish tinge.

Careful About Disease

During harvesting, leaves are re moved carefully from the plant.

Damaged leaves spoil the quality of the tobacco, bring problems to the manufacturer, and lower the return to the farmer.

Once the crop is picked all tobacco stalks are uprooted, dried and then burnt to avoid risk of any possible tobacco disease going into the soil.

The tobacco companies collect the harvested leaves, cure them for the farmer, and sort them into grade lots: the farmer is paid on the value of his crop when cured.

The Fiji Governor, Sir Derek Jakeway (with pipe), and Mr. Tom Collins, development manager of Carreras of Fiji Ltd. (with hat), inspect young tobacco seedlings, covered with bamboo for protection. — Photo: Rob Wright.

The treated leaves go to the com panies’ factories in Suva to be blended with overseas tobaccos and made into cigarettes. Like the housewife, the cigarette manufacturer is proud of his special recipes for blending and he is not inclined to impart his secrets.

Curing, too, is a highly specialised operation. Heat and moisture are the two requirements for curing and they must be applied at the time and in the right proportions to ensure good results.

Grading is also an expert’s job. The tobacco man uses his sight, sense of smell and his touch to assess the various properties of the tobacco he cures, so that he can standardise similar characteristics into various grades and know what these grades are going to produce in terms of flavour, strength, colour and aroma when the tobacco is smoked.

Before 1955, imported cigarettes and Suki, the locally produced twisted tobacco, were in favour, but Suki has gradually given way—though not entirely—to the more sophisticated locally produced machine-made cig arettes.

Suki found its way to Fiji from India—brought by Indians during the period of indentured labour.

Imports Drop

Since the Fiji Tobacco Co. and Carreras of Fiji Ltd, have entered the local growing and manufacturing field imported tobacco has dropped from 272,989 lb weight in 1955 to 12,348 lb in 1965.

Last year the two companies manu factured 320,689,000 cigarettes in Fiji.

The local industry has also found itself a lucrative export market in the Pacific, exporting to Tonga, New Hebrides, the Solomons, Wallis and Futuna Islands, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, New Caledonia, the Marshall Islands and Rotuma.

By overseas standards cigarettes are inexpensive here and claims that there are packs to suit all tastes, even the most sophisticated, are quite correct.

Packs and prices of locally pro duced cigarettes are: Carreras of Fiji Ltd.—

Competition between the two com panies is fierce, though healthy, and in the local advertising field it has had an effect in a manner other than that intended.

Local advertisers in Fiji tend to follow a please-buy-my-violets approach, and the introduction of con sistent, top-line advertising layouts and gimmicks from overseas has stimulated local efforts.

Both companies sponsor sporting

fixtures and local charity efforts generously, and to date Carreras have sent seven girls to Britain for a two-year training course in the use of modern machinery.

Both have also recently extended their Suva factories, and Carreras factory staff is now about 100, with Fiji Tobacco Co. slightly lower.

Cigarette making machinery is up to-date, machines being capable of turning out 14,000 cigarettes a minute. Both factories are plagued by the tobacco beetle, a world-wide tiny pest which accounts for tiny circular holes in purchased cigarettes, All doors and windows to factories are screened and all tobacco brought in from the field goes into a gas chamber before entering the factory itself. Factories are fumigated regularly, and as an added precaution Carreras has installed a freezing chamber in which cigarettes are stored for 24 hours before going to the stores.

Fiji's beautiful, bountiful Sigatoka Valley.— Photo: Rob Wright.

A familiar Sigatoka Valley scene—tobac co leaves drying in racks by the road side for the Fiji Tobacco Co. Ltd.

Piccadilly Pack of 10 s. d. 11 Crown Cork Tipped 11 Consular Menthol 11 Crown Filter 11 Pall Mall 11 Rothmans King Size 1 1 Pack of 20 Dunhill s. d. 2 6

Fiji Tobacco Co, Ltd.— Lion Pacific Menthol Ascot Pack of 10 s. d. 9 9 11 Gold Leaf 1 0 Kool 1 0 Pack of 20 s. d.

Benson and Hedges 2 6

Development Plan

For Cook Islands

THE Reserve Bank of New Zealand has agreed to release Mr. V. D.

Stace, a senior economist, to prepare a development programme for the Cook Islands.

Mr. Stace has been especially re quested by both the Cook Islands and New Zealand Governments because of his familiarity with Cook Islands problems, his knowledge of under developed territories in the Pacific, and his international experience with the Food and Agricultural Organisa tion.

Retail Sales Fall

In Western Samoa

AS a result of the shortage of cash following the hurricane of January 29, Apia merchants are reckoning on a fall in retail sales this year of over £600,000.

This was revealed following a survey in May of 16 leading firms by Western Samoa’s Economic De velopment Department.

Merchants predict that sales will fall from between £W5616,000 and £W5678,000. This represents a drop of about 15 per cent, on last year’s retail sales of over £4 million.

Coupled with lower sales, staffs are expected to be reduced by 10 per cent, by the end of the year. The 16 firms, employing 1,179 persons, reported that up to the end of May, 82 employees had been retrenched.

A further 32 were likely to go be fore the end of the year.

The department said that with the absence of income from bananas and cocoa, a more serious collapse of purchasing power was prevented by increased returns from copra.

In the first five months of this year, total sales fell by less than 1 per cent., with the smaller firms suffering bigger falls than larger firms.

However, the real effect is expected to be felt over the next few months when returns from copra will fall.

No other income is in sight until banana exports resume in quantity in September.

Meanwhile, Samoans received wel come relief with the first distribution of World Food Programme emer gency supplies in mid-June. In less than a week, under the supervision of Hurricane Relief Committee secre tary, Mr. R. Betham, 200 tons of flour and 438 tons of rice had been delivered through pulenuu (village headmen) to every family in the territory. The distribution worked out at roughly 2i lb of rice and 51 lb of flour per person.

The only unhappy people were the bakers—even two weeks after the distribution one Apia baker claimed that his bread sales were still 30 per cent, below normal.

Another 1,000 tons of flour, 187 tons of canned meat, 63 tons of sugar, 187 tons of vegetable oil and 11,490 cartons of evaporated milk will be distributed between now and September.

Warning For

Tonga's Traders

TONGA’S Minister of Finance, M. U. Tupouniua, has taken measures to relieve the acute short age of essential goods in the kingdom.

He has freed from restrictions a number of goods, including butter, sugar, flour, cigarettes and meats and he has enabled small businessmen to apply for their own import licences instead of having to import through the big firms.

The Hon, Tupouniua has also issued a strong warning to traders that if they don’t import enough essential goods to meet a reasonable demand then there would be “selec tivity” in the issue of import permits.

PlM’s Nukualofa correspondent, Dorothy Lavin, reported in June: When the kingdom introduced im port controls early in 1964 a master licence was issued to traders impos ing a 25 per cent, cut on the total of their imports for the previous year.

There were also specific restrictions on some goods.

But some traders have not co

operated with the spirit of the restric tions. They have used their quotas to import luxury lines, or goods that give high mark-ups, and cut down on the essential goods. Thus they have kept up their profits.

Cigarettes are one item that has been drastically short, yet traders have been using only two per cent, of their allowed quota. Such artificial shortages created by this policy have caused considerable discontent in the community.

More discontent has been caused by the effect of the controls on small traders, who in past years bought all their goods at wholesale prices through the big traders and thus were not entitled to import licences on their own account. With the ad vent of the restrictions many of the small traders were refused this ser vice, and had to buy goods at retail prices from the big men.

The new changes have been greatly welcomed by the small trader, who is now independent of the big trader.

This could alter the pattern of trade in the kingdom.

One serious effect of the previous shortage of meat has been the drain on the country’s livestock. The Government may import its own meat, and sell it through the govern ment markets.

Jap. Pearl Industry

THE Fiji Government has given the Japanese company, Pearl Pro ducts Limited, a five-year licence to cultivate pearls at Vukanicuku Bay, Gau Island.