Stimulating investment in pearl farming in ... - World Fish Center

collectors. A realistic scenario might be to increase the number of spat collectors by5000 a year until a total of 20,000 are deployed in year four. Under these conditions,oyster numbers stabilise at close to 150,000 and the staffing needs increase to 16.However, labour is cheap in this model and despite increased costs, an operatingprofit is returned after six years. The potential profits increase to ~$1 million perannum and the return on investment to ~35%. An operation on this scale would stillrequire commitment of ~$2 million before a net return was evident – in this case inyear nine.The bio-economic model described in this section is simplistic, but the intention is toshow that, using realistic parameters, a sufficiently large investment in black pearlfarming in Solomon Islands, over a sufficiently long period, should be profitable.Costs for which we have no information have not been included, notably provincialand national government licensing fees, costs of renting onshore and seabed facilitiesfor both farming and spat collection and set-up costs relating to legislativerequirements. These areas will be covered in other reports from this project,specifically from consultants dealing with the business climate in Solomon Islands,legislative requirements and government policy.The Friedman/Bell model is for a pearl farm in which all of the functions are carriedout by the enterprise, from spat collector deployment to pearl harvesting. Theadvantage of this approach is control of all aspects of production. An alternativemodel, in which specific activities such as spat collection and grow-out are more orless devolved to local communities, may be preferred by Solomon Island authorities.The range of options for pearl farming in Solomon Islands will be explored insubsequent reports from this project26