LOI TUAN EE

Holstein Milk Company

Upon our arrival at the Holstein Milk Company’s farm in Muadzam Shah, we were immediately ushered to meet the ‘ladies’—the farm’s cows, awaiting to be milked for the day. The managing director of the farm-to-shelf dairy company was grinning as he supervised the entire process, decked in a milking apron. A conversation with Loi can get very technical at first, because his passion for the farming sector runs deep, and he is eager to talk about it. “Our speciality is fresh milk, as God intended, and we want consumers of Farm Fresh to enjoy it,” he says. The nitty-gritty work of building a sustainable farming ecosystem takes up most of Loi’s time. On weekdays, he travels to all of the Farm Fresh farms in the country to check up on its operations and on weekends, he will hit the supermarkets to chat with customers for their feedback on his products. “When I was undergoing the Endeavor selection process, I was making about RM50 million a year. But Afzal Abdul Rahim told me during a review session that he believes my business has the potential of making RM500 million a year. It shocked me. Here I was, thinking that I was already making a lot! But Afzal insisted that I can do more—that I have a huge space to grow if I took the right steps,” recalls Loi. Today, Holstein’s Farm Fresh milk is highly in demand in the ‘horeca’ market, which stands for ‘hotel, restaurants and cafes’, outside of the core supermarket business. They have since diversified to direct selling as well with limited edition kurma milk, proving that Endeavor’s support has helped them think outside of the box for revenue opportunities. “Growing pains is a process that we had to adapt to. When we started, we were processing 10 tonnes of milk a day, now we are targeting 100 tonnes! That’s 10 times more output, which is quite overwhelming for our farm team! But Endeavor played a huge role in guiding me through the process of setting up the right infrastructure to ride through the tough times,” says Loi. Having benefited from Endeavor’s insights, Loi looks forward to giving back to future entrepreneurs. “Tropical dairy farming is a huge undertaking if you do not have the right genetic assets—the right cow breed to thrive in Malaysia’s equatorial climate, for example—or support to sustain your herds. I am happy to share what I know and what I have learnt from the process with entrepreneurs from Malaysia and other equatorial climates,” he says.

“Growing pains is a process that we had to adapt to. When we started, we were processing 10 tonnes of milk a day, now we are targeting 100 tonnes!”