BUTTER FROM FIJI

Manawatu Times, Volume XLXI, Issue 3481, 15 December 1926, Page 11

BUTTER FROM FIJI

SENT TO DOMINION. Last year Fiji exported butter to New Zealand. The surplus from a small Crown colony in the Pacific was sent to one of the ■ world’s dairying countries! This fact was revealed by Commander W. Burrows; K. N„ a district Commissioner of Fiji, who arrived by the liner Mataroa yesterday. Commander Burrows, who has been in charge of a district of Levuka, is confident concerning the future of the island territory. Fiji, he says, is developing a dairying industry as well as sugar and copra production, and that dairy industry is run by New Zealanders. At present it is small, but planters In the islands are running cattle to keep the ground clear under their trees, since stock can do no harm. So there are prospects of development. Also in Fiji there is now being erected a freezing works which can handle stock from the plantations. In this, he understands, there is a certain amount of Australian capital. Fiji has now definitely turned the corner towards prosperity. Hit very hard at the time of tho slump, she was now receiving good prices for sugar and copra. In war time the price of copra soared up to £4O and £SO per ton and then had fallen to £2O. At one time the people had made money out of it at £l3 per ton. Commander Burrows, who is a keen angler, will spend some time fishing in New Zealand before he returns to the islands where ho has been for six years altogether.