Written by Max (age 7) Photos by Josh (age 12)
We visited the Coconut Oil Production Santo Limited Mill or COPSL for short. The company uses coconuts to make different products. All of the islands in Vanuatu grow coconuts. For some islands the only money they make is through selling their coconuts. They use the money to buy food like rice and to pay for school fees. COPSL gets their coconuts from Santo and some of the islands nearby.
The coconut meat is used to make coconut oil, which has become very popular lately. The left over parts of the coconut is used to make feed for animals or fertiliser. It can also be used to create a type of fuel which is important, because Vanuatu doesn’t have any oil.
We were taken on a tour of the factory to see how they make the oil. The first thing they do is get people to rip the coconut and leave it to dry. It is then called copra.
Some of the dried coconut or copra
Then the coconut got crushed into smaller pieces and then crushed again into even smaller pieces.
A machine crushing the copra even smaller.
Then the oil gets squeezed out of the copra.
Then some people put the oil into bottles.
The oil ready for bottling. Tristan has some of the oil in his hands.
That was the end of our tour.
