The COCOFIJI Story

COCOFIJI began its life in the pristine Fijian islands. The Coconut (‘niu’ in Fijian) has been sustaining life in Fiji for thousands of years. The Fijians have learnt to rely on the coconut for many uses. These include eating the coconut flesh, as a skin moisturiser, a sunscreen, for cooking, coconut water to drink and using the coconut as charcoal in a fire, to name a few. It has grown wildly, and there was no such thing as organic certification, as everything was organic by our modern day definition.

With the advent of commercialisation, the coconut became a valuable commodity for the production of margarine and an ingredient in food production. Western traders saw an opportunity to commercialise the coconut and as a result many coconut plantations were established. The commercialisation of corn oil and palm oil changed all of this, and the pacific was abandoned as a source of coconut oil as they did not convert to corn and palm oil, as there lands did not allow them to do so, as it would have required large scale mechanised farming.

Large scale farming is not the Fijian way. Copra drying as it was it was done for large scale companies in the past, has been suggested akin to a form of slavery. The farmer had to collect the coconuts from the ground, then cut them and remove the flesh, the copra (white coconut meat) is then dried on an open fire on a metal plate and left in the sun for days, sometimes months. Often the copra has mould and is not very clean. The copra is then taken to an industrial mill and processed often using chemicals as hexane to clean the oil. The oil is old and dead in its health benefits and often yellow in colour due to excessive heat.

Today at COCOFIJI, we work in partnership with the local producers and help them build their own economy, processing the fresh raw coconuts into Virgin Coconut Oil within an hour of cracking the shell. This gives COCOFIJI Coconut oil the vibrant taste and quality health benefits you will grow to love as much as we do.