FIJI BOOMING.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 228, 23 September 1920, Page 4

FIJI BOOMING.

NEW INDUSTRIES. (Special to "Star.") SUVA (Fiji), September It. Business is fast improving within the colony. There are many indications that industry is going to be considerably increased before long. We have Meserg. Jacomb and Matthews here, representing the big meat-packing concern of Messrs. Sims, Cooper and Co., of New Zealand. They have been round Tonga and Samoa in the interests of their corporation, and are now investigating cattle-growing possibilities in Fiji. Messre. Powell and Johnson (local men) have applied for a monopoly of all the doga or mangrove trees in the group, and propose to erect a £10,000 to £20,000 plant in Suva, with the object of extracting tannic acid, of which the doga bark carries a heavy percentage. The Government has offered them a ten years' license over the whole of Viti Levu (the largest island), on which grows 60 to 75 per cent of the total doga in the colony. A representative of outside capital has completed arrangements to erect an oil mill, the first in the South Pacific Islands, to treat copra. Some small excitement was caused last week by a visit to Suva of one of a mining prospecting party, who report having found alluvial and reef gold some 40 miles from the capital. A £900 sluicing plant is now on its way to the show. The prospectors have secured further prospecting areas, but there is no local rush. The specimens shown tfere all right. The "show" is in very rough country, and everything has to be carried in by bearers. .