Pacific Magazine > Magazine > September 1, 2006

Samoa

Samoa's Growing Harvest

A Family Nonu Company Looks To Expansion

By Afamasaga Toleafoa, APIA

The medicinal qualities of nonu (or noni) have always been well known to Samoans—indeed, many Pacific Islanders. Around every Samoan home or fale, one is sure to find two or more nonu plants. No one put them there. They just grew, part of Samoa’s natural plant life and foliage, another sign of nature’s abundance in these parts.

Two women sell nonu on the side of the road on Upolu, Samoa.  [photo: Olivier Koning]

The nonu plant appears to do especially well on Samoa’s rocky volcanic soils. After the volcanic eruption of the early 1900s that devastated vast areas of Savaii island, nonu was the first plant that pushed its way up from the barren expanse of black lava fields that were left behind.

Today, some 100 years later, much of that black lava supports fields of thriving nonu growth, interspersed with other hardy pioneering plant species.

For Nonu Samoa Enterprises Ltd., as for the villages that had once been devastated by the lava flows a century ago, there is money to be made in “them thar lava fields.” Samoa’s exports of nonu products were second only to fresh fish exports last year. “Nonu exports were worth T$12 (US$4.3) million in 2005, but the most exciting part is the huge potential to expand that, which we are just beginning to realize,” said Gary Vui, Nonu Samoa Enterprises’ chief executive officer.

More than 65 percent of those exports came from Nonu Samoa Enterprises Ltd., a family owned and run nonu processing company that turned to exporting dried nonu fruit in 1997 after the then-booming fishing industry crash and an economically ruinous overseas ban on imports of kava.

The founder of Nonu Samoa Enterprises, Fasavalu George Siaosi and his wife Tamaitia, began exporting dried nonu fruit with a staff of three in 1997. Two years later, they were employing 20 people and exporting nonu juice as well, explains Vui. Today, the company employs 74 people.

The company’s main markets for its dried fruit and nonu juice are the United States of America and Australia, although Japan and South Korea are more recent markets. Exploratory visits to China this year indicate a large potential there as well.

“The U.S. market for nonu products is worth $1 billion dollars this year but
is expected to rise to $1.5 billion by 2010,” Vui says. “Seventy-five percent is presently supplied by French Polynesia. Our aim is to capture at least 1 percent of that market. At the moment we sell nonu juice in 1000 litre containers to our overseas distributors who then package under our company’s brand names of Healthy Island in the U.S., Island Spirit in Australia, and Samoana in Japan.”

Eighty percent of the company’s exports are juice, but Vui says the market trend today is to dried fruit, which overseas manufacturers of health products turn into capsules, cosmetics, skin ointment, lip balm, soaps and shampoo.

Product quality is critical to the company’s success, with the major markets looking especially for organically grown fruit. Samoa is well placed to meet those requirements, Vui says, as nonu grows naturally with other plants in Samoa’s semi-subsistence village environment, and in the case of the lava fields, where there is no other form of cultivation or of human habitation.

Nevertheless, Nonu Samoa Enterprises is working closely with the Ministry of Agriculture and rural communities to ensure only fruit from areas not contaminated by herbicides or pesticides are harvested. The company has also secured an area of government-owned land on the island of Savaii to farm itself to ensure there is an uninterrupted supply of organically grown fruit.

Samoa Nonu Enterprises is located on two acres of land on the outskirts of Apia. It opened new premises with a new factory and processing plant in December 2005. Production is always to order as the different markets and end users all have their own particular requirements.  Eight-five percent of juice is hand squeezed. All of it is pasteurised except for juice for the Japanese market.

Vui says that the traditional strength of the Samoan family has been behind the success of Nonu Samoa Enterprises. Like many Samoan families, Fasavalu Siaosi and his wife Tamaitia had family and children already living in the United States and in New Zealand when they turned to nonu. The children became part of the distribution and marketing network, allowing the small fledgling company to access markets and makers of plant and equipment without incurring enormous costs.

In August 2005, son-in-law Gary Vui and his wife Almyra Vui returned to Samoa from New Zealand to take over management of the company and allow the owners to ease into retirement. Almyra now looks after finance and administration while her husband is company CEO. Another son takes care of marketing and distribution in the U.S., while another is production manager at the new plant.

Vui brings many years of senior management experience with him, having been general manager of Rothmans Samoa, and after serving in various management positions in New Zealand for more than a decade.

The company expects 2006 to be another record year following last year’s more than doubling of sales overseas. Volumes rose from 369,800 litres in 2004, to over one million litres valued at $3.5 million last year. The company has already won several export awards including a Quality Crown London Award in 2004 and an International Star Award in Geneva the year before.

Closer to home, Nonu Samoa Enterprises has won several export awards in addition to the full support of the Samoan government. Minister of Trade and Commerce Misa Telefoni says government is fully behind Nonu Samoa’s export drive having already set up a special task force to protect the organic status of nonu supplies.

Global competition has not always been kind to Samoa’s traditional exports of green bananas, kava, and cocoa and coconut products. Nonu Samoa Enterprises has shown how small Pacific Island companies and economies can both survive and thrive in a dynamic and rapidly changing global environment.