Diversify raw coconut products

IT is time Papua New Guinea focus on diversifying the coconut raw products in addition to copra and look at developing and expanding into other potential products.
Already concerns have been raised by the Department of Agriculture and Livestock that the copra sector of the coconut was not really making any money for the agriculture industry.
Why are we only worrying about money from copra?
Let us look at expanding on the coconut product into other potential products. We can have virgin coconut oil, coconut fibre and coconut lumber.
In addition, another potential export commodity from coconut is coconut shells. PNG is listed as one of the top 10 coconut producers in the world along with Indonesia, Philippines, India, Brazil, Sir Lanka, Mexico, Thailand and Malaysia.
The last statistics showed in 2011 year of production, we produced 1,238,260 million tons of copra.
Certainly, it would be an envy of our neighbouring brother countries in the Pacific.
The Kokonas Indastri Koporesen (KIK) office should plan to expand more into Virgin coconut oil, coconut fibre for the mattress industry and coconut shells whose big potential lies with industries who produce charcoal for cooking and natural release carbon solution for use in chemical and water treatment facilities.
For PNG, we possibly may have an oversupply of coconut trees and nuts in general.
But our challenge would be meeting the volume that would be required to sustain yearly demands from the world market.
While we harvest, coconut farmers should be encouraged to start a replanting programme and encourage the coconut producers to start planting new coconut trees today.
So they will to be able to produce the required volume for these new industries to supplement for copra.
As we diversify the coconut through these other markets of raw coconut produce, it would translate a cushioning effect to the copra sector as and when the world prices rise and fall.
Consequently, maintaining a steady flow of income for our coconut growers who don’t have to depend too much on the peak performance of copra prices.
The growers as they harvest the coconut meat and prepare for dryers also prepare the shells and coconut fibre too for selling. That’s three raw products from one nut. As a comparison or more a justification for KIK to move to coconut shells exports for the charcoal industry.
We don’t need to go far to see how and where we can exploit our coconut shells. Philippines, one of our neighbouring Asian countries, are currently the world’s number one coconut producer. In, 2011 we were ranked within the top 10 coconut producing nation in the world with Philippines at the top. They have increased their coconut shells productions for the charcoal industry by a whopping 80.87% growth from 25,000 metric tons to 45,000 metric tons of coconut shells for the charcoal industry.
These lessons, examples and attractive production rates of what these countries are doing to boast and diversify their coconut industries, certainly puts PNG in the cross-roads and not too far behind.
It’s time to muscle up, put all our efforts and thinking cap on to accelerate and take our coconut industry to the next level or diversifying the coconut portfolio and strengthening and maintain constant income levels for our growers and the nation in general who deserve to be protected and maintained in this sector.