Industry helps SMEs step up

Business

By DALE LUMA
THE Kokonas Indastri Koporesen’s (KIK) small and medium enterprise (SME) programme is helping businesses reach international standards in terms of packaging, says agri business manager Douglas Maip.
Maip, who is also the chairman of the National Coconut Festival, said it had seen a change in the way business did their packaging and labelling since starting its SME programme five years ago.
“We started with four SMEs in 2014 and back than the packaging and labelling part was not like what it is today,” he said.
“They used to extract coconut oil and put them into coca-cola and cooking oil bottles and used markers to write the labels,” Maip said.
“From 2014 to this year, we have grown from four to 16 SMEs and have upgraded the quality, packaging and labelling so that they can produce the products locally but meet international standards.
“This is also a way we can help to support the government’s aim of creating 500,000 Papua New Guinean SME’s by 2030.”
Maip said KIK was currently supporting the 16 small business owners under its SME programme with training and coconut milk extraction machines.
“The training is for quality in terms of training them how to properly package, branding, labelling and graphics which are key things and what you call market power so you attract consumers.
“We also support them by bring in coconut extraction machines in from other countries.”
Maip said this was how the coconut industry had grown from copra to high valued coconut products.
“We know that copra is a labour-intensive industry but now it has shifted from copra to value added products and interesting things are happening in this sector.”