 From around 1900 Henderson and Macfarlane dominated the copra trade, operating their vessel SS "Archer" in the South Pacific with a trading route to Fiji and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands.New competition came from Burns Philp, operating from what is now Kiribati, with competition from Levers Pacific Plantations from 1903 and from Captain E. F. H. Allen of the Samoa Shipping and Trading Company from 1911.Structural changes also occurred in the operation of the trading companies, which moved from a practice of having traders resident on each island to trade with the islanders to a business operation where the supercargo (the cargo manager of a trading ship) would deal directly with the islanders when a ship would visit an island; by 1909 there were no resident palagi traders representing the trading firms.