I always like flowers especially orchids. When I received my first pay cheque of Rm 700 as a JKR engineer in 1957, I bought a Vanda orchid flowering plant for Rm 30 and I would continue to buy 1 Vanda Orchid plant every month. Orchids are more costly than ordinary flowers because Orchids can last much longer than any other flower. For an example, a Dendrobium or a Vanda or a phalaenopsis can last about 2 months before they wilt away.

Tissue culture is the fastest method of orchid plant propagation. If you are interested to know more about tissue culture, you can   Google to find out. In the 1980s tissue culture started in Thailand. The Thai could propagate so much and flooded the market. As a result, the cost of 1 flowering Dendrobium plant was Rm 3.00 and each plant could produce 3 sprays of flowers per year. Moreover, 1 plant could be divided into 2 plants by splitting the original plant.

Wah! I was pleasantly surprised to see this new discovery and I could see the profit growth potential of this business. I immediately registered a company called Dendrob Sdn Bhd. and I bought a piece of land about 10 acres beside Sungei Kinta in Ampang, Ipoh so that I could get free water supply to grow orchids.

With my engineering skill, I constructed all the necessary infrastructures including automatic water spraying and timer system; like the picture below.

I imported 300,000 Dendrobium plants from Thailand which cost me about Rm 1 million including import duty. After about 2 years I could produce about 1 million sprays of white Dendrobium flowers annually which I could sell in Japan for Rm 1.0 each. I estimated my net profit would be more than Rm 1 million annually.

To export Dendrobium flowers to Japan I needed air cargo space. Coincidently many foreign companies started making computer chips in Malaysia and all the available air cargo space was reserved for computer chips export. One small box of computer chips cost a few hundred thousand Ringgit and one large box of dendrobium flowers only cost Rm 200.

At that time my old business partner Dato Yap Lim Sen was CEO of IGB and a MAS Director. He managed to pull some strings for me to export some of my products to Japan. Soon I realised that I could not continue to take advantage of my old friendship to make some money. Finally, I terminated my orchid business with a substantial loss. I learned a costly lesson.  

Dendrobium plantation

A bunch of Dendrobiun flowers 

Expensive Lesson

Before I venture into this orchid planting business, I should have found out the difficulty of securing air cargo space for my orchid export and also our Malaysian market for flowers is too small because buying flowers frequently is not in our culture.