Sabah entrepreneurs are helped all the way

Food is big business no matter where. It has boomed for fisherman Saldikun Ali Lampong, 41, and his wife Normadiah, 40, who, six years ago, started a small business of selling frozen crabmeat from their home on Bum Bum island, off Semporna, about 300 km from Kota Kinabalu. They sold them to hawkers and grocers. Now they have a factory to make biscuits from crabmeat; all thanks to a 150,000-ringgit ($45,500) grant from the Sabah fisheries department.

A stroke of luck in 2006 found Mr Saldikun supplying hundreds of kilograms of crabmeat every week to a cold storage in Kota Kinabalu. He recruited 12 of his fellow fishermen to catch crabs to fill the order. The Sabah fisheries department gave them each a 10,000-ringgit fibreglass boat specially made for catching crabs.

The federal rural and regional development ministry discovered them and encouraged them to learn to make biscuits and crackers from the crabs that they caught. They joined training courses of the Malaysian Research and Development Institute (Mardi). The Sabah fisheries department taught them how to package and market their products.

“We were given a 150,000-ringgit grant by the Sabah fisheries department to set up a factory,” Mr Saldikun says. And Sokai Enterprise was born. It meets standards of the Standard and Industrial Research Institute of Malaysia (Sirim). They have five workers, all school leavers.

Mr Saldikun still supplies about 200 kg of frozen crabmeat to his customer in Kota Kinabalu every week. “When I started, I didn’t have a freezer,” he says. “I bought five 10-kg blocks of ice at 5 ringgit each to freeze the crabmeat. The fisheries department later gave me freezers.”

Mr Saldikun was one of about 100 entrepreneurs who exhibited their products at the Malaysian Agriculture, Horticulture and Agrotourism (MAHA) show at the Padang Merdeka in Kota Kinabalu on March 27. The two-day exhibition, showcasing mostly Malaysian agricultural products, is a precursor to an international show held every two years.

This year’s MAHA international will be held at the Malaysia Agro Exposition Park (MAEP) in August. Noh Omar, federal minister of agriculture and agro-based industry, says 28 countries will take part in it and 2m visitors are expected.

Sabah chief minister Musa Aman says the MAHA show, the first in Sabah, gives Sabah businessmen much exposure of their agricultural products. Indeed, Mr Saldikun plans to sell his products overseas.

Mr Noh says his ministry will help Sabah develop the bird’s nest, ornamental fish and seaweed industries. – Insight Sabah

– Reported by Elizabeth Majaham