Transcript
KAREN MAPUSUA: The starting point, and still the biggest product worldwide, is coconut oil. And that's either in the form of the copra oil, which was the traditional product from the Pacific, and more recently the virgin coconut oil and that's the starting point. From there, there's the really obvious products like soap and cosmetics - things along those lines, then we also move into products you can use with the byproducts from making oil. So the flesh that is leftover from the coconut when you've made oil can be turned into dessicated coconut, it can be turned into flour - there's big interest in flour of course because it's a gluten free product. There's also then more, I guess, hi-tech processing to extract things like medium-chain triglyceride, which are of real interest in the health industry. So there's a really broad range of products that can be developed from the humble coconut.
JAMIE TAHANA: How is the potential harnessing this? What potential is there, and is it currently being utilised at all?
KM: I think we're just at the beginning in the Pacific. We still are focussing very much on the coconut oil - both copra and virgin coconut oil - but at the moment we're not doing terribly much in downstream processing of those two products. There's a little bit of work done around flour and a little dessicated coconut, there's also coconut cream being produced, but we haven't yet moved into either larger scale production of those products for export, or looking at the extraction issues like the MCTs. So I think we've got a lot of scope to develop, and definitely the people who have been at the conference this week are fairly inspired with the new opportunities that are out there. It will take time, of course, because new technology and new processing takes investment and it takes research, but I do think the industry will continue to diversify as we get more exposure to this sort of technology and able to participate in this type of conference.
JT: What does it take for these Pacific countries to harness these opportunities you're talking about, particularly in small countries where exporting is difficult?
KM: It takes a whole range of things and I guess the whole value chain needs to be looked at to see where the issues are, and clearly the higher value we can get for the coconut the better our opportunities are for export. So if we can do more of that value adding and processing at home in the islands we've, one, got a product that is often easier to export, but also we're just building that value at home so that we are just compensating for some of those costs we just can't get around like the cost of transport. But it is a complex issue and it will take a full range of stakeholders - private sector and government and supportive development partners - to address those and help us move the industry forward.
