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Food Processing Food Processing

farms; their biggest tool is their machete and their shovel.” Despite these challenges, Wilson says there is opportunity
He says post-COVID, sales have started to pick up, but they to break into new markets. The company’s chocolates are now
still not back to pre-COVID profit levels. stocked in Fiji duty free stores, and it is in discussion with
“The challenges in the manufacturing sector that we are New Zealand distributors.
seeing in Samoa at the moment are cost of materials and “I’ve been in New Zealand, and I would describe it the
the cost of shipping,” says Wilson. “Everything is going up in same as when you look at the NZ mountains – the success goes
price. One of our ingredients in making sweet, nice chocolate up really high and then you have those lows, “says Wilson.
is sugar and also milk – we have seen an increases in those “It’s been a rocky time for us – the measles in Samoa and
prices. then COVID and then losing our workforce – but with that
“Another major challenge that we are finding in the being said, there’s always the silver lining and we believe
islands is that we are losing a lot of our workforce to that coming back we have to take what we are doing more
seasonal work programmes which I know are important in seriously and try to not rely so much on what we were relying
developed countries, but we are losing a lot of our staff, our on pre-COVID. We are learning and growing. What doesn’t kill
professional workforce and also our farmers to these seasonal you, makes you grow stronger. We believe we are in another
programmes,” says Wilson. gear now and we’ve got more products coming out that will
“So, the challenge for us definitely is high costs, high cost help us be more sustainable to things like the pandemic and
of production, high cost of materials as well.” other economic downturns.”

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