COFFEE plantation owner Yong Khian Fook will be marketing locally produced coffee beans next month to meet growing domestic demand. In an interview with The Brunei Times, Yong said that now is the perfect time to introduce Labi-grown coffee beans to the market given the rise of local coffee culture.
“Cafés are popping up everywhere and people are getting more interested in coffee so hopefully in the future I can supply these cafés with coffee beans,” he said.
A long time farmer and supplier of farm machinery, Yong decided to start his 20-hectare coffee plantation four years ago because the crop was easy to raise.
He said fruits and vegetables have high yields but a lot of them will go to waste as he won’t be able to sell all of them before they start to rot. This is one problem he doesn’t have to contend with in coffee farming.
“After we dry the coffee beans, we can keep them in storage for a long time. This means a lot for the business because it means that the input being fed into the plantation is not wasted,” he said.
His parents’ experience in growing coffee also encouraged him to go into the business despite the lack of specialists in the country that could give him advice on growing coffee trees.
“I’m the first person to grow coffee trees in Brunei and although there are risks involved, I’m looking forward to have my product available on the market,” he said.
Yong said there are only a few thousand coffee trees in his plantation at the moment. But once his product gets a positive response from the local market, he plans to increase the number of trees to produce enough coffee to meet local demand.
Yong and his team are now perfecting the roasting process to produce the best quality coffee beans that could potentially rival imports.
He said apart from his plans to set up coffee plantations in all districts in the future, he also wants to export his coffee beans.
“If the market responds well, we hope to go international but right now the focus is perfecting our coffee beans and strategies to market them,” he said.
As of now, they have three roasts to offer customers and plans to offer more varieties to the local market.
Apart from supplying local cafés with his locally grown coffee beans, he hopes to make his products available in supermarkets as well.
Zafirah Zaili
Bandar Seri Begawan
