Getting higher than your neighbours [1]
Friday, August 30, 2002 - 10:00. Updated on Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - 14:18.
From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 17, no. 2, August 2002.
The quarry business, particularly on Tongatapu, is a thriving but very competitive business according to Sione Tafolo of the Fasi‘apule Holding Ltd.
Sione said that when he started two years ago there were only three or four operators, but now there were eight, “and it is an on-going task for people who live in the low-lying areas to keep filling up their properties.” He said that it was a bit like a cat chasing its tail, “because if the neighbour fills their property up, then during the next heavy rain the water drains into your property, and so you have to fill your property up”.
Sione said that a sector of the market that he was concentrating on at the moment was road construction with every village fund-raising to build their own roads, “It is interesting because a big percentage of the funding of village road projects comes from overseas, so the state of the local economy does not have any impact on construction, because most of the money comes from overseas.”
Sione said that he returned to Tonga in 2000 to help his father run the quarry business. His father died the same year and so he stayed on and looked after business, a decision he did not regret.
Sione plans to relocate his business from Fanga to Pea and to set up his own crushing plant in September.