Tristan: New Businesses

ADMINISTRATOR DISPELS TRISTAN DA CUNHA’S MYTHS Part 3: New Business Opportunities

SARTMA: After the new harbour is complete, will there be more scheduled stop-offs by shipping and tourists especially that en-route to or from the Falklands?

BB: Whether we get more tourism is debatable but I think we will get more visits by yachts. At the moment, if a yacht visits Tristan, and they come reasonably frequently, especially if they are taking part in a yacht race and on the way back they stop at Tristan. They can only stop for as long as the weather allows them to stop because they have to have a constant eye to see whether they are pulling or dragging their anchor. If there is too much swell they can’t stop because they’ve got no place to tie up and they have to anchor 200 yards out at sea, So, the new harbour will be designed to take them in. It will be deep enough and protected enough to tie up along-side. People have talked to us about sailing out from Cape Town. People could come and stay for a few days, a few weeks, whatever they like. That sort of tourism would definitely increase. As the word gets around that we’ve got a safer harbour, more operators might be interested in coming and stopping at Tristan da Cunha.

SARTMA: It can’t get over the 60 days a year, yet people really want to visit the island.

BB: One of the problems at the moment is that tour operators cannot guarantee that people are going to get a landing. Obviously, for many of them to visit Tristan is a life-long ambition and they get there and they lay there for 36 hours and cannot get ashore and that’s really very disappointing. That new harbour would give a much better chance. Once that news gets around some ships that have in the past that have avoided Tristan because of the potential disappointment which is bad news for them as tour operators will probably think again. There are so many tour ships we can handle. It’s a very small community so we don’t want to be overwhelmed, that’s for sure, but we are not going to discourage the contact and the educational aspect of having people come to the island and, of course, the additional revenue they would bring to it.

SARTMA: What about ships, perhaps scheduled, coming from the Falklands or South Georgia?

BB: I don’t know about scheduled ships coming from the Falklands. We are a little bit off the normal shipping route. Unless you are coming to Tristan you don’t really pass it by and it’s too far one way or the other. We actually see very few ships passing. We certainly be interested in and encourage a little bit more shipping traffic just for the sake of the island. As people come and have a look at us and exchange some educational things, the community will get more mature and people do want to travel a bit more. One of the great restrictions now is how to get people on and off the island.

SARTMA: You have some links using the RMS and fishing boats.

BB: The fishing boats do about four or five sailing’s a year and they only take a small number of passengers each. If we send maybe three or four medivacs which is quite common, to send people back for operations in Cape Town, and then a family of four or five go and that’s it. The ship is full. And when we get people in Cape Town when they are paying accommodation or the Tristan Government’s paying for them to be there, and we can’t get them back because there isn’t a sailing. And that costs a lot of money. We have actually bought a house in Cape Town that is now owned by Tristan Government specifically for people to stay at while medivaced. Because we are spending such a vast amount of money out for accommodation, the house is paying for itself. That took two years and it’s quite extraordinary. Also, it is now a holiday venue for Tristanians who want to go on holiday. They get a cheap rate and they get a good holiday. That will encourage people to travel more because they have a place they can stay with their friends and so on. As the limiting factor is getting to and from the mainland, the more ships that pass by on predictable time scales would be a big boom for us if we could organise that.

SARTMA: Would any of our potential products such as Reindeer meat and pork from the Abattoir or our Mullet and Mero from other processing concerns in the Falklands be of any interest to people in Tristan da Cunha?

BB: I don’t think we would be interested in importing meat, or pork or fish or anything like that from anywhere actually because we have our own meat. We’ve got a plentiful supply. We just actually started importing pigs to start supplying pork on the island and most people do fishing for the pot.

SARTMA: Is the export of Crayfish to an exclusive market or would Tristanians consider export to the Falklands, especially our restaurants?

BB: As for the crayfish, it’s in the hands of a fishing company. We have a long term fishing agreement with a company called Oden-stone (phonetic spelling) in Cape Town. They basically have exclusive rights to the crayfish. We set the quotas. They catch and market it. We control how it is caught. A lot of it goes to Japan, some goes to EU markets and some goes to the States. We recently entered into a fishing agreement with a New Zealand Company called (words obscured) who are targeting Patagonian Toothfish. The marketing is not in our hands because we don’t have the expertise. If anyone in the Falklands wants to import some crayfish I am certain we can organise that.

SARTMA: What other products might be suitable for export from Tristan da Cunha?

BB: We are looking quite seriously and have had expressions of interest about the export of bottled mineral water. We’ve got a plentiful supply of it, far more than we could ever use ourselves coming down from the mountain. It is pure and of volcanic origin. It is very high quality and doesn’t need any treatment at all. It has some good properties and was tested and compared with existing well known brands of mineral water and came out on top. What we need is a company that’s got the marketing expertise and the foresight to know how much demand there is in America and Europe. I understand it’s gone up 25% in the last two years. It’s an enormous market. As you know the population has risen and in places there is a great shortage of water. There is always going to be a market for water, I think. If we take this forward, we want a small bottling plant on Tristan and it would be sold under a pretty much exclusive label. You can picture the marketing potential for a product like that. I have been telling the islanders over the three years I have been there it could actually become more valuable than our fish. You know, there has been a lot of talk about how water is going to be the cause of the next world war. If we can generate a good market then we could bring in a good income. It would be a long-term investment, by the way. We would have to offer a 25 to 50 year exclusive agreement in order to get the investment needed to set up a small bottling plant and do the marketing.

This all goes back to the harbour. Unless we can get stuff off the island there isn’t much point in doing it. So, the harbour is essential to any sort of development for an export like that.

SARTMA: Besides the water, are there any other things that could bring an income to the island?

BB: The only other thing we can export is Tristan: its remoteness, its life-style offers a way of life for a long-term visitor. I am talking about 6 months to a year. A retired person may want to come to write or to study or do something like that in perfect tranquillity, if you like. You could do a lot worse than come to Tristan. Tristan can export itself in attracting that sort of person to come to the island.