VANUA Levu Pellets Makers is a family owned thriving business at Vunika in Labasa owned by 70-year-old Ram Pratap and his sons. This family business is the Northern Division’s sole producer of pellets.
This year they were assisted by the Northern Development Programme [NDP] with $25,000 as a security for their loan from the Fiji Development Bank, which enabled them to buy a new wood mizer electric saw worth $80,000.
Mr Pratap’s son, Jitendra Prasad, said the family business started in 2000 with a smaller electric saw.
“Before we were using a small machine but the production was really low so we had to seek assistance from the Forestry Department and they gave us the idea of setting up a mini sawmill to
meet the demand for pellets,” Mr Prasad said.
To buy a bigger machine the family then sought the assistance of the NDP, which gave them a grant of $28,000 to secure a loan of $80,000 from the FDB.
“From that money were able to buy a bigger machine called the wood mizer which cost $120,000 and this has increased our production by nearly 200per cent,” Mr Prasad said.
“We buy rejected logs or waste pine logs from various contractors in Vanua Levu and recycle them into pellets.”
Marketing of their pellets is not a problem. “We market our pellets to six major companies in Viti Levu namely FMF, Nestle, Paradise Brewery, RC Manu Bhai, Fiji Industries and Standard Concrete,” he said.
Mr Prasad said the above companies usually ordered thousands of pellets every month and with the new machine the business is meeting these demands.
“The selling price for our pellets range from $25 to $30 each. We are producing over a thousand pellets monthly,” Mr Prasad said.
The family business is not only benefiting the economy of the North but is a source of employment to people in neighbouring communities.
“From six workers with the old machine we have increased the number of workers to 11 since the introduction of the new wood mizer machine,” the businessman said.
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