A 106-millon US dollar food processing plant in American Samoa is planned to be up and running by the middle of the year.
Pago Pago Harbour, American Samoa Photo: AFP / Michael Runkel / Robert Harding Premium
The government has approved plans by Filipino company AVM Bernardo Engineering to build a plant that will initially process fish but then expand to other food products.
Our correspondent Monica Miller says the project, set to provide about 700 jobs, will be a boost for the territory which lost the Samoa Packing cannery in 2009.
She says work on the site at Tafuna Industrial Park will get underway shortly.
"The company is quite confident that it can set this plant up very quickly and that it should be in operation in a couple of months time. The ground-breaking is planned for some time this month. They say that this apparently is their forte that they go in and set up food manufacturing plants so they've got a lot of expertise in this area and they hope to get it up and going before June/July."