Koicolo Co-op to help NRU
Rokobici said they’ve urged respective villages to allocate at least one acre of their land to their clubs to plant cash crops and the responses have been positive.
Tuesday 16 September 2025 | 23:00
Naitasiri Rugby Union (NRU) has ventured into establishing co-operatives for their affiliated clubs.
Under their commercial arm, the Koicolo Rakavi Co-operative will help rugby clubs take care of their members’ welfare through farming.
The planning process of this project began in 2023 and was implanted this year.
Koicolo Rakavi cooperative chairman Meli Rokobici said NRU was taking this step forward not to rely heavily on sponsorship grants from Fiji Rugby Union and other business houses.
The co-operative has been set up to enable rural rugby clubs become primary corporative where they can farm while the market for the products will be facilitated by the bigger corporative.
They are working closely with the Ministry of Trade, Co-operatives and Small and Medium Enterprises and Ministry for Agriculture.
The project starts off with piloting five of their 18 rugby clubs after conducting awareness to their respective villages.
The clubs are Rara, Waimanu, Navuakece, Navunisalusalu and Viria.
Rokobici said they’ve urged respective villages to allocate at least one acre of their land to their clubs to plant cash crops and the responses have been positive.
The Koicolo cooperative will likely begin selling their products particular frozen cassava in the next fortnight which will be available in supermarkets.
“We are starting slow to test things out. We have mapped this project to run for about three to four years,” Rokobici said.
“The Koicolo Rakavi cooperative will facilitate the market for whatever crops and vegetables are planted by farmers.
He added they are also working with SOLE Fintech to set up accounts for these clubs and its members where they open saving buckets from the sales made from their produces.
Rokobici said with the club registration fees increased to $1000, NRU believes the only way this would be paid off was through farming.
NRU chairman Aseri Rokoura added: “Year in and out we’ve always been a fundraising team, this initiative was brought up by the committee in order to see if we can go another level up.”
He said farming and selling produce was not new to people from Naitasiri.
“20 per cent of our players travel daily right from Vunidawa; this will allow us in the future to start to fund players’ welfare as well.”
Rokoura said the cooperative which is independent but is under the NRU.
