From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 13, no. 4, December 1998.

Tonga’s new High Temperature Forced Air Treatment machine at the Fua‘amotu Airport, could be processing tons of fruit daily for export, but it is lying idle most of the time because there is no export produce to be treated.

Tonga is among the first countries in the world to have the machine, which overcomes the fruit fly problem that prevented produce exports in the past. But Dr Mike Williamson, the man who invented machine, warned that he is building the same machine for Western Samoa and six in Australia next year. This means that Tonga has only a few months lead time to establish itself in the export produce market using this facility, “if you are aiming at the New Zealand market, it is going to be very competitive next year,” he said.

Mike was in Tonga at the end of November, “to see how things are going and to get the other half of the machine to work.”

He said that the technology is only eight years old, and only six machines are in operation, all in the Pacific—in New Caledonia, Cook Islands, Tonga, Fiji and Hawai‘i.

He said that he developed the idea at the University of Hawai‘i to destroy fruit flies in fruits for export, “it is simply using very hot dry air, but it has become very popular because it is chemical free, and somehow it improves the quality of the fruit.”

Tonga’s $280,000 machine is the larger of two sizes that he produces, it is made out of stainless steel and for each loading it can take 1.5 tons. Mike’s message for Tonga is to act fast, “and get the machine to run around the clock, clearing nine tons of fruit for export every 24 hours.”

The Tongan machine is under-utilized, running only twice a week, and it is only half operational. Currently it is loaded only twice and sometimes three times a day. The problem is that there is no export produce to be treated—growers have no vegetables and no papaya available for export.