Cheese man
ON Thursday, March 8, 1984, The Fiji Times reported a first of its kind venture - coconut cheese. A Mr Brian Leonard of Nevaca Estate in Taveuni told The Fiji
Times in a telephone interview from Apia, Samoa, that he had started making cheese in that island country after being refused funding in Fiji.
Mr Leonard had begun making cheese from coconuts at his home in Taveuni in 1983 and had wanted to set up a factory in Taveuni. To put his project on a commercial scale he sought help from the Fiji Development Bank.
“I went to see some officers at the FDB, but they did not sound too interested in the venture,” Mr Leonard was quoted saying.
He said he did not go back to the FDB after that.
“The problem there was that it was a high-risk venture which was why they were not enthusiastic about it,” he stated.
“Another reason I did not pursue the matter further was that I was not too happy with the shipping system at Taveuni.”
If containers were used in shipping from Taveuni, he said it was likely that he would try to get coconut cheese factory started on the island in the future.
Mr Leonard said he received an offer from a business enterprise in Samoa that had read about coconut cheese in a report in The Fiji Times the previous year.
Mr Leonard had taken over an old dairy farm in Apia which he converted into a cheese-making factory.
“We have had very favourable results and right now we are still producing samples for which there is a big demand in Australia, New Zealand and the United States,” he said.
He was still carrying out experiments in making cheese and had already produced half a tonne from coconuts in Apia.
“The coconuts in Samoa are larger than those in Fiji which makes work a little easier for us,” he said.
He said the factory itself did not require many employees, but a lot of workers were needed in the preparation of coconuts which included scraping off the coconut meat.
“About 2000 coconuts are needed to make a tonne of cheese,” Mr Leanard said.
He said he hoped to export about 200 tonnes of cheese by the following year.
He said people in Australia were trying to acquire sole agencies for the coconut cheese, but he was still negotiating with them.
Mr Leonard said it was a world “first” when he produced cheese from coconuts at his estate in Taveuni.
A dairy technologist for 15 years in Australia, he came up with the idea of making cheese from coconuts after he noticed similarities between coconut meat and milk.
“Milk contains protein, fat, sugar and water, coconut meat contains the same,” Mr Leonard told The Fiji Times.
Mr Leonard has predicted that the manufacture of coconut cheese would revolutionise the coconut industry.