Homegrown kava is becoming a lucrative commodity with growing interest from the pharmaceutical industry.

Kava Corp Founder, John Sanday, says they received a significant number of overseas pharmaceutical outlets keen to purchase Fiji’s kava for medicinal or drug purposes.

Sanday adds the onus is now on local kava farmers and dealers to upgrade their control and quality standards, sanitation as well as labelling.

“Quality Control in place and extracts, it opens up new markets particularly in the food manufacturing industry, nutraceutical industry and also in the pharmaceutical industry.”

He adds some overseas pharmaceutical markets have started purchasing local kava and this is the beginning of something great for the industry.

Sanday highlighted the need to win various key markets.

“There is a growing interest there. I think we haven’t hit the point where they start to come and make big purchases but we hope to continue to upgrade our standards and our quality to attract the bigger boys.”

Plans are also in place to produce kava tablets solely for people who participate in sports.