According to statistics provided Wednesday by Tobolar Copra Processing Authority, 7,641.25 tons of copra was produced from January to December 2008. This was topped only in 1995, when 7,728 tons was processed by Tobolar.
Copra is dried coconut meat that is used to produce coconut oil World market prices soared in 2008, with the price paid to producers in the Marshall Islands nearly doubling to 22 cents per pound on the remote outer islands and 23.5 cents in the capital, Majuro, where the processing plant is located. Coupled with the dramatically increased price has been the privatization of government shipping since 2007, which regularized and stabilized ship schedules to the outer islands after years of haphazard service.
Showing that the continuing high price paid for copra in Majuro is having an impact, Majuro copra makers from October to December produced 67.9 tons of copra — nearly half of the total they produced in the previous 12 months.
But it wasn’t only Majuro hustling up copra. Likiep Atoll, which from October 2007 to September 2008 produced only 103 tons, produced 96.7 tons from October to December 2008. Another usually modest copra producer — Utrik — also outdid itself. For the previous 12 months, Utrik had only accounted for about 82 tons. But from October to December it produced 63 tons, or nearly 80 percent of the annual total in just three months.
