Alastair Baxter

There haven’t been too many good news stories coming out of Fiji in the last year or so. Mostly we hear about delayed elections, expelled diplomats, news censorship or even devastating floods. However, behind all this at a local level there are some great sustainability projects being developed in this Pacific Island nation and one of these is to do with the production of bio-diesel from coconuts.

President of Fiji, Ratu Epeli Nailatikau and me

As some of you may know, I’m not playing rugby at the moment because of injury – a disc injury in my neck – it’s not serious but it is one of those injuries that does take time to heal properly. This kind of injury I find particularly frustrating because I’m told by the medical staff that the only thing that is going to heal it is time. No matter what rehabilitation exercises I do, no matter how many extra physio appointments I go to it’s still going to take the same amount of time to heal. However, to help ward off some of this frustration I’ve thrown myself into my architectural work as well as accepting just about every invitation to speak/coach junior, schools and senior rugby clubs. This has meant that I’ve found myself busier than I’ve ever been and to complicate things further I have also accepted an invitation to start a sustainability consultancy group to work along side some of the stuff I do for Greenlight Technologies – which brings me back to coconut bio fuels in Fiji. When researching the viability of this new consultancy venture (which also includes, among others, my Waratah team mates Tatafu Polotanau and Cam Jowitt) I came across some notes I’d made about this bio-diesel project in Fiji.

It was when I spoke at a Fiji Australian Business Council conference last December and met another delegate, Carl Probert that I first came across this project. Carl is quite an extraordinary person, he is a five time Olympian and national record holder for Fiji in swimming and runs a marine business based in Suva, Fiji.

Carl at the time had just developed his first micro bio-diesel factory specifically designed to operate on smaller isolated islands. The idea of the product was to attempt to give these isolated communities the ability to create a source of revenue from the thousands of coconut trees that are scattered across these island as well as hopefully reduce Fiji’s enormous reliance on imported diesel. The bio-diesel is produced from the white flesh of the coconut called copra which is dried and then pressed in a small oil seed press. The factories can produce up to 5,000 litres per week of Niu 80 (80% coconut oil, 20% diesel & 750 millilitres of catalyst) and it is able to be used in all engines that can operate with standard diesel. (The only drawback though is that it will only work in the consistently warm temperatures of the tropics – if the temperature goes into the mid teens or below then the diesel mix becomes too soapy to ignite and will clog up the engine.)

The real success of these factories is that they look after the triple bottom line. That is, they are economically sustainable, socially sustainable and environmentally sustainable. These small factories not only help the environment by reducing the need for Fiji to import diesel fuel but gives locals on isolated islands the ability to use a natural resource to produce fuel that not only gives them a source of income but more importantly it gives them fuel for boats and other vehicles so that they can more readily take there produce and products to markets. It also allows for a greater ability to access health and education services on the main islands – hopefully helping to break the cycle of poverty in some of these isolated communities.

Koro Bio-diesel factory

At this stage there is one factory operating on Koro Island, 2 in the process of being built in Fiji with expressions of interest to build 15 more in Fiji and 2 in Tonga. I hear also that the World Bank is also looking to fund further factories across the Pacific Island region.