Business and Development

Trade war on two fronts

A trade war on two fronts is loom ing between Fiji and Australia. One battle is over Japanese cameras with Australian dealers being accused of trying to pirate Fiji’s lucrative share of the duty-free trade by taking over distribution rights.

The other is over flour with an Australian millionaire flour miller ac cusing his fellow millers of exploiting the Pacific Islanders. There is a move to cut the Australians out of Fiji’s flour market with the building of a flour mill in the dominion by a Bombay company, Wallace Flour Mills.

Presumably, the Australians as camera distributors would force the Fiji dealers to sell at a fixed price.

It’s long been known in Fiji that Australian business circles resented the sound of Aussie money pouring into the tills of the duty-free traders in Fiji from the thousands of Aus tralian tourists in Fiji.

Commonwealth Customs have put the screws on several times to cut the number of duty-free cameras, radios, even television sets which are bought in Fiji by Australian tourists with a consequent loss of sales by Australian shopkeepers.

Latest move was to limit to 12 lb the weight of duty-free, tape record ers and record players allowed into Australia, and to 4 lb the weight of radios, a move which the Japanese hope to counter by producing ultra light models.

No one in Australia had thought up anything to stop Fiji hogging the camera market and selling to Aus tralians cameras at less than half the price of the same models in Aus tralia—not until now. The latest move is by the Australian dealers who are now striving to take over Fiji dis tribution rights and have made ap proaches to the Japanese camera manufacturers.

“Dirty underhand tactics”, accuse the Fiji traders who stand to lose more than $1.5 million a year in camera sales alone if the Australian

dealers can block the duty-free trade.

According to Mr. P. B. Stinson, of Stinsons Ltd., of Suva, who sells Canon and Yashica cameras, an Australian dealer had approached the Canon manufacturers who had turned him down. Stinsons, however, had lost the Bolex agency.

Morris Hedstrom Ltd., Fiji distributors of Nikon and Olympus cameras, described the Australian move as a “definite threat” and said, “We know that our equivalents in Australia dislike intensely the fact that Fiji has duty-free cameras because it cuts into their sales. We probably sell twice the Nikons they sell.”

Next gambit by the Australian dealers, which has really riled the Fiji traders, was to tell the Japanese that Fiji dealers were not competent to service the cameras they sold and hence, presumably, were not fit to sell them.

A Japanese Camera Industry Association three-man mission landed in Fiji in November to check this but they refused to comment on their findings.

Mr. Ben Jannif, managing director of Caines Jannif Ltd., Fiji distributors for Minolta and Konica, said his company and Stinsons had repair services as good as any found in Australia and accused Australian dealers of charging ridiculous prices for repair jobs which Fiji dealers did for nothing.

The Fiji Government has also got

into the fight. Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara warned at the November Australian trade fair in Suva that Australia was in danger of losing trade if it damaged the busi ness of others in the search for more business for itself. Loss of earnings in Fiji’s duty free goods sector, for instance, could impair the country’s ability to pay for goods it wanted from other companies with a result ant loss of orders.

In Australia, the principal of one distributor of Japanese cameras said that an association known as the Japanese Camera Importers’ Associa tion was very concerned at the busi ness being lost to Australia through Australians buying in Fiji. The as sociation was “trying to protect Aus tralian trade”.

Asked what the effect would be in Fiji if Australian firms secured dis tribution rights for Japanese cameras in Fiji, he said Fiji would still get cameras. He did not think there would be any attempt to enforce resale price maintenance, because he did not think it would be possible.

He said the cause of the trouble in Fiji was that Indian firms were pre pared to work at practically nil margins. They had never really put on an adequate profit. They tended to be cheaper than anybody.

On the flour front, Australian mil lionaire miller Mr. Asher Jedlin, managing director of Crest Mills, which has a small stock feed mill near Suva, charged that political

pressures in Australia were stopping him from shipping grain to Fiji at $3O a ton less than the price at which it is now landed.

Fiji and other Pacific Island countries were being exploited when they bought Australian flour, grains and sharps, he said. It was all the work of the Australian Country Party which had “sabotaged” the wheat industry so that it could win support from the farmers by getting wheat subsidies for them. Political influence was also behind his failure to charter small ships to carry bulk grain and primary products to Fiji. He could not use his own 480 ft Sydney Harbour wharf for grain exports and was forced to ship grain more ex pensively in sacks in ships operated by companies on high cartel prices.

The Fiji Government had two offers to build a flour mill in Fiji which would make the dominion self-sufficient in flour and its by products, one from Gillespie Brothers, the Sydney milling and baking group; the other from Wallace Flour Mills of Bombay. The government chose the latter and an agreement has now been signed. The government also offered a three-acre site in Suva’s Walu Bay industrial area for the mill and production is expected to start in about 18 months.

The mill could, when production increased, export flour to the other Island territories. It would be several dollars cheaper than the Australian flour.

A company formed to run the mill, Suva Flour Mills Ltd., will offer local shareholders a 49 per cent, stake in the $1 million project.

Mr. Jedlin is also interested in buying into the firm.

Another India-based firm moving into Fiji is Victor Apparels Ltd., of Bombay and Delhi. It has taken a 10 per cent, share in Rollex Hosiery (Fiji) Ltd., which plans to open a clothing factory at Nausori. Adi Lady Lala Mara, wife of the Prime Minister, is a director of Rollex Hosiery.

FOOTNOTE—Latest move on the camera front has been made through Australian newspaper advertisements claiming Australians have advantages in buying cameras before going over seas. To counter two admitted advan tages of buying overseas (no sales tax and a haggle over price), C. R. Ken nedy (Sales) Pty. Ltd., Asahi Pentax stockists, stresses that cameras bought in Australia have a one-year inter national guarantee and a two-year Australian guarantee on service. The firm also offers a “haggle” in the shape of a non-fixed retail price, so the buyer “may also bargain in Aus tralia”.