Fiji brewery all

set for start

Final plans have been worked out and $1,500,000 raised for the new brewery planned for Lautoka, Fiji’s biggest sugar centre, but about 1,000 people in the area don’t want the brewery.

They have petitioned the Fiji Government —which suggested the idea of another brewery—to refuse permission for the brewery and a distillery.

Consolidated Hotels holds 51 per cent, of the shares of the new com pany, the South Seas Brewing Com pany Ltd.

Objection to the brewery is on a religious basis, but the company has assured the Fiji Government that it will co-operate in every way over any social problem which might be created through the drink trade.

The government is known to favour a second brewery to break the monopoly which Carlton Breweries at Suva have enjoyed for so many years, and to give the people the right to a second choice of brew.

Waikato Breweries, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Consolidated Hotels, an equal partnership of L. D. Nathan and NZ Breweries, will manage the new brewery.

The distillery will produce industrial alcohol, processing it from the molasses produced by the South Pacific Sugar Mills, but this will not be for drinkers’ consumption.

The Fiji Development Bank is a shareholder in the new company and the Fiji National Provident Fund— the country’s superannuation scheme —has offered the necessary first mortgage money. The balance comes from lending institutions in New Zealand and the Bank of New Zea land in Suva.

Construction of the brewery is ex pected to start in September.