Page 34 - IB November 2023

Food Processing Food Processing

FROM SAMOA WITH ALOFA

By Rowena Singh

“Our vision is to take Samoa products to the world,” says
Nathan Wilson, director of Wilex Samoa.
“That was the founder, my father Tangaloa Eddie Wilson’s
vision, to create a gateway for the Samoan people to get their
crops out into the world. Obviously, you can’t do that right
now competitively without adding value to the crops that we
have growing in the islands.
“We have earmarked cocoa, noni and kava as some of the
crops with the biggest potential, adding value to different
products. With each crop item we have created brands around
the Pacific, and we did do some launches pre-COVID. We had
a speed bump with a lot of the sales and all of the avenues
that we launched to. We are looking at re-launching again
properly, probably [this] December and January 2024.”
Wilex Samoa’s product line includes kava, noni juice and
cocoa products. Their cocoa products range from chocolates
to cocoa powders, cocoa nips, cocoa butter and cocoa liquor.
Wilson says they source from farmers all around Samoa.
Wilex also works with the Samoa Cocoa Industry Association to
train young farmers, supply seedlings and increase yields.
This includes encouraging multi-cropping. As Wilson says,
diversification is more sustainable, and that “you’re not
just taking and taking from the land and eventually the crop
quality goes down.”
It does mean Wilex is paying a higher price for its raw
inputs. “The international price of cocoa right now on the
commodities market, if I was to buy cocoa in bulk from one of
the big commercial countries like say Ghana or Ecuador who
provide big bulk cocoa, their international price right now is
US$2.78 per kilo whereas we pay our farmers almost US$4 per
kilo.”

Markets
The company’s chocolate lines are mainly purchased by
tourists visiting Samoa, but prior to COVID, they also sent noni juice is known as a health supplement kind of like your
product to Hawaii and other parts of the US, a market they vitamins. It gives you daily health benefits. There’s a lot of
plan to revive from Christmas this year. studies that show the benefits of the noni juice. And the
“Pre-COVID we were hand packing most of our chocolate markets for those are mostly the Asian markets, like Korea,
products,” says Wilson. “In the islands we don’t have the Japan and also China. China is one of the emerging markets
high-tech packaging equipment and stuff. It’s not as easily for noni juice.”
accessible in the islands to get good machines so now all of
our chocolate machines are moulded by hand by our factory Organic certification
staff, and they are also de-moulded and then hand packed Wilson says while many of the farmers they work with are
and wrapped with the packaging. It’s quite a tedious process certified organic, “in the islands, it’s starting to be almost
but one of our mottos which is on the package is ‘Heaven sent unfeasible for the smaller farmers to keep up with the organic
with alofa from Samoa’, which means it’s made with a lot of certification. There are costs from the organic industries for
love and care. We do believe that it also adds to what the them to come and certify each farmer, but to be honest in the
customers are buying as a lot of love and care has been put islands most of the farmers are not at the level where they
into it.” use commercial fertilisers and commercial sprayers and other
Unlike chocolate, the noni line is primarily exported. stuff that people are worried about.
“For the noni juice, it’s a whole different market. The “We don’t have big commercial farms. We have small family

34 Islands Business, November 2023