Every time I’m within the frozen meals aisle while grocery buying, one model that retains showing is Kawan Meals.
From paratha and frozen greens to frozen french fries, finger meals, plant-based meals, and paus, there seemed to be an countless checklist of frozen merchandise produced by the model. There’s little doubt that it’s a frozen meals empire.
However you may hint its roots all the best way again to 45 years in the past, when it was a small family-run enterprise making and promoting conventional pastries from dwelling.
Making desires come true with flour, water, and oil
Within the Nineteen Sixties, Kawan Meals’s present government chairman Gan Thiam Chai and his household began promoting selfmade meals.
In an interview with The Edge, Gan shared that his mom would cook dinner while his father would pedal his trishaw to varied places to promote what she had ready.
Gan’s first foray into entrepreneurship was again in his education days, when he peddled nasi lemak packets.
The nasi lemak packets he bought did so nicely that he ultimately needed to get his associates to behave as “brokers” in varied courses to assist with the rising variety of orders for the nasi lemak packets.
At his peak, Gan was making and promoting 600 packets of nasi lemak every morning earlier than faculty, which he mentioned brought on the canteen operator’s earnings to fall by 50%.
Gan ultimately began working as an electrician at German firm Behn Meyer to ease his mother and father’ monetary burden straight out of secondary faculty.
However, together with his lack of tertiary {qualifications}, Gan knew that his path to success could be in meals, the enterprise which he nonetheless knew the most effective.
He ultimately began making popiah pores and skin on the market because it was a easy product with extraordinarily accessible components, which had been flour, water, and oil.
“I used to be very clear about what I needed to do. As children, we might all break up as much as promote pau like brokers, and my brother noticed a really profitable popiah stall close to Stadium Merdeka—that was how I acquired the thought.”
“Popiah pores and skin was one thing I had the components for and it didn’t require a variety of capital, in order that was how we began,” he recalled.
The enterprise did so nicely that Gan had managed to make greater than his full yr’s wage at his earlier firm in only a month.
Kneading for the longer term
In 1976, Gan Thiam Chai based Kian Guan Buying and selling, what we all know immediately as Kawan Meals, as a sole proprietorship.
The enterprise targeted on supplying conventional pastry merchandise equivalent to kuih bakul and kulit popiah to native grocers and supermarkets.
Inside a number of years, Gan was in a position to put money into equipment that may enable him to additional develop the enterprise and improve its capability.
Throughout this time, he married Kwan Sok Kay who joined him within the enterprise and now acts as a director.
Quick ahead to some years later and Gan discovered himself within the midst of the recession of the mid-Nineteen Eighties.
He shared that this was a difficult time for him as supermarkets couldn’t pay for his or her consignments, and that this prompted him to contemplate increasing his enterprise abroad which is when Kian Guan Buying and selling was renamed to Kawan Meals.
“I realised that 90% of my clients weren’t Chinese language! I felt that I wanted a reputation that was extra memorable. Kawan sounded good, a very good that means in Bahasa Malaysia, and the characters in Mandarin appear like two leaves,” he mentioned.
In 1984, Gan integrated Kawan Meals Manufacturing to fabricate ready-to-eat (RTE) frozen meals merchandise and export them overseas. Australia was their first export market.
In accordance with Worth Make investments Asia, in 2017, RM76.3 million or 38.9% of Kawan Meals’s gross sales had been from home clients.
The remaining 61.1% of gross sales had been generated from exports to key markets equivalent to:
- North America: RM58.7 million (29.9%)
- Asia (excluding Malaysia): RM34.3 million (17.5%)
- Europe: RM16.3 million (8.3%)
- Oceania: RM10.2 million (5.2%)
- Africa: RM0.5 million (0.3%)
Diversifying and future proofing the enterprise
As the corporate continued to broaden, Gan saved investing the earnings into future-proofing the enterprise as a lot as attainable by buying the most effective out there automation expertise.
By the way, his proprietary roti paratha automation course of was mentioned to be the primary on the earth.
“Not many individuals know that I created this course of. Lately, our opponents are utilizing our first-generation equipment whereas we now have moved on to the fourth technology,” he acknowledged.
In 2000, they established a brand new manufacturing facility at part 15, Shah Alam, and would go on to win a number of awards for his or her distinctive manufacturing requirements and enterprise practices.
Kawan was listed on the Second Board of Bursa Malaysia in 2005, and in 2006, opened a 440,000 sq ft manufacturing unit in Nantong, China, to cater for its rising world demand.
In 2011, the corporate’s gross sales income had crossed the RM100 million mark, they usually went on to accumulate a chunk of land in
Selangor Halal Hub in Pulau Indah, Klang.
Launched in 2019, it reportedly homes the nation’s largest chilly room warehouse that makes use of a complicated storage and retrieval system.
In the meantime, each Kawan Meals and Gan himself have diversified into different companies.
Final yr, Kawan Meals introduced that will probably be taking a 32.5% stake in domestically developed quick meals chain startup Kejap Meals while Gan is a director and 35% shareholder of crispy crepes chain, Scorching & Roll.
Now of their late sixties, Gan and his spouse have began speaking about stepping again from Kawan Meals, and letting their youngsters handle the enterprise. Their daughter, Gan Ka Bien, is at present a director.
“They perceive expertise so a lot better. I solely know we’d like it, however they know extra about the way it works,” shared Gan.
“We’re going to cross this enterprise on to the following technology, and they’re going to have their very own concepts — they’re extra educated. We will solely use our expertise to information them.”
At current, Gan stays actively concerned with Kawan Meals’s group of meals scientists and cooks in creating new merchandise and developing with contemporary concepts.
Gan shared that though he beforehand had Ka Bien do the meals testing for him, his grandchildren now do the entire meals testing.
“I take advantage of my dwelling kitchen as a testing floor for recipes, and I share it with my R&D group to allow them to see whether it is attainable to introduce them to the market. It doesn’t matter what, if it’s a product that we don’t like, it gained’t exit to the market.”
- Study extra about Kawan Meals right here.
- Learn different articles we’ve written about Malaysian startups right here.
Featured Picture Credit score: Kawan Meals