Preah Sihanouk Biz Fair draws big crowds
AFTER losing money raising pigs because of the high price of feed and low selling price of pork, a woman shifted her business from livestock producer to meat processor where she earns a better income and deals with a more stable market.
Keo Derya said she used 300,000 riel ($70) as capital to buy pork from other traders to process into sausages. Although she has not earned a high income since starting her new business, she sees an opportunity to earn more in the future.
Derya said she has often encountered problems with other processor’s sausage quality as they do not keep for long time, so she tried to find a new way that improves quality and taste.
She said that after a year with many failures and hard work, she saved up about $500 as capital to start the next stage of her business, using the money to buy a meat grinder and better packaging for her sausages to ensure they maintain their quality for a long time so that she could begin selling to minimarts and supermarkets.
“I’ve not only put my products in the marts, but I’m also selling them online and putting my products in various exhibitions for people to taste for free so that more people know them,” she said. “I can sell 400 to 500kg of sausages per month, which is about $3,000 to 4,000 a month.”
After these outreach activities, her business has become better known and she has begun to expand her production.
Currently, she makes three types of sausages: pork, beef and chicken. She bought chicken from a farm and the beef from Cambodian Muslims.
However, it is currently just a family-scale business, and she plans to expand, especially now that the economy has started to recover from the pandemic.
In Preah Sihanouk province, sausages packaged in plastic bags are lined up at a food fair booth with the “Mohaleap” logo – the name of Derya’s business – and people frequently stop by to inquire about the price.
Derya said she has had encouragement from the provincial administration to participate in the exhibition of products made in Preah Sihanouk province, which was organised by Thourn Sinan, chairman of the Pacific Asia Travel
Association (PATA) Cambodia Chapter.
During the five-day exhibition event, she hopes to earn more support from new customers and take advantage of the assistance provided by provincial leaders for promoting local products.
Sinan, the initiator of the “Biz Fair”, said he welcomed the presence of local and regional business owners and expects that this event could become a big part of promoting the Kingdom’s coastal provinces and especially as a platform to promote the region’s diverse array of products.
The Biz Fair was held in Preah Sihanouk from November 5-9 and among the hundreds of booths at the event, there many kinds of products, including tourism-related services and foods, most of which were from locally-owned businesses.