Rarotonga cannery closure is

Business

Rarotonga cannery closure is a blow to Cooks’ economy

From W. G. Coppeli

Island Foods Ltd, the Rarotonga based fruit processing firm, which has played a major role in the Cook Islands’ economy for the last 16 years will close in August.

The cannery has been losing money and has blamed it on the “unpredictable and disappointing” production of citrus fruits.

The fruit-processing plant pro duced large quantities of a variety of tropical fruit products orange juice, tomato juice, fruit salad, pineapple juice, pineapple chunks and orange concentrate.

Indeed, Raro orange came to fill the major share of the fruit juice market in New Zealand. The plant was designed to handle up to a million cases of citrus a year, and since the mid-sixties it has process ed almost all the pineapples pro duced by the newly-established plantations on the outer islands of Mangaia and Atiu.

In days gone by, the Cook Islands were very much involved in the sup plying of fresh oranges and bananas to the New Zealand market but this trade has declined and the fact that the plant on Rarotonga took all fruit and not only the export grades en couraged the citrus growers to aban don the fresh fruit trade.

During the 19505, a vigorous citrus replanting scheme was under taken in the Cook Islands but unfor tunately some varieties, for instance mandarins, were planted, which were unpopular in New Zealand and were not suitable for use in the can nery.

Several years ago the planters were warned that the time had come to rejuvenate the orange trees by top pruning them but generally this was not done and now production is declining markedly from the ageing trees. The greatest quantity of oranges ever delivered into the can nery in one year was 200,000 cases and present production is well below that level.

The high rate of migration to New

Zealand has also made it difficult for the plant to operate efficiently.

It is possible to obtain sufficient unskilled labour for the seasonal de mands of the plant, but it has been very difficult to obtain the skilled and semi-skilled labour needed for maintenance and other essential tasks. At the moment several Fijians are employed on the engineering functions.

Compounding the problems of the cannery is the shift in the agricultural activities of planters on Rarotonga. Many of them are at tracted to the high prices that are being obtained in New Zealand for cash crops, such as cucumbers, papaws, egg plant, beans and tomatoes and they are not showing any marked interest in investing time and money in crops which will take several years for a worthwhile return. Moreover, some of these planters are looking forward eagerly to the opening of the Rarotongan Hotel, as they see that here will be another market for quick-growing cash crops.