Lautoka Duck Farm Benefits from Australian funding for small businesses

9 April 2010

Lautoka-based Reddy Farms has been awarded an Australian government grant of $149,900 to expand its Pekin duck breeding and processing business.

Located at Vitogo, on the outskirts of Lautoka city, the company has been in operation for the last eleven years and is currently undertaking a major expansion program.

Australia’s Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance, Hon. Bob McMullan MP, has announced that Reddy Farms is one of nine Pacific companies to receive awards this year under the AusAID-funded Enterprise Challenge Fund (ECF).

Other Pacific companies receiving ECF funding this year include new bio-fuel facilities in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, and a coconut oil extracting plant in the Solomon Islands.

Into its third year of a six year pilot, the Enterprise Challenge Fund provides matching grants for commercial projects which demonstrate a potential for sustainability.

The grant will enable Reddy Farms to expand its Pekin duck breeding business by supplying participating sugarcane farmers with week-old ducklings, feed and technical support before buying back the ducks for processing and distribution.

The Acting Australian High Commissioner, Ms Sarah Roberts, says the funding will allow Reddy Farms to meet the strong local demand for Pekin ducks.

“This project will also provide a very real and much needed alternative source of income for up to 130 local farmers, most of whom are facing reduced incomes from their sugar cane crops,” Ms Roberts said.

Depending on their level of participation, sugarcane farmers who commit to the Reddy Farms project can expect additional income of between 30 and 40 percent

Reddy Farms is the third commercial enterprise in Fiji to receive a funding grant under the ECF Pilot Program. Past ECF grant recipients include Natures Way Corporation which received $263,321 and Future Forests Fiji which received $190,000.

The Australian government supported Enterprise Challenge Fund is a $20.5 million competitive grants scheme which provides matching grants of between $100,000 and $1.5 million to private sector projects which benefit the poor, are commercially sustainable and encourage economic growth in key sectors. Eligible grantees must commit at least fifty per cent of their own funds to project costs.

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[Note to Editors: For more information on the ECF visit: www.enterprisechallengefund.org