Bali

The rainy season has started in earnest, which will slow down flowering.

The property people are forecasting a burst of demand for villas, while hotel rooms will stay in the doldrums.  This is because the new Omnibus laws facilitate people living in Bali and working online.  With more and more companies encouraging their employees to do so, they expect more people to do this.  Lots more. We are not forecasting, merely passing on what they are thinking.

Administration

Proceeding fine.  We have a trial period of three months working with Traceworthy, a consultancy allied to Cocoon, who will bring our accounts and legal business up to international standards.  End of year audit is due at the end of the month, and we will arrange an AGM in January. The current plan is for Traceworthy to prove their effectiveness by reaching certain goals in these three months. This includes bringing in $100,000 of new investment.  Should they do so, their long term goal is to take us to market within three years. Not just on the Indonesian stock exchange, but others as well.  This will not just improve the value of the company, but increase your share value and provide you with a simple exit strategy.

Finance

Traceworthy gives us a fourth option and we are exploring a fifth.

Plantations

The flowers in Gardens 2,3 & 4 continue.  We have a number of the most valuable vines in Indonesia, with multiple racemes on a shoot. Dadap and I aren’t convinced, though. We think that this is appreciated in Indonesia because it provides more pods, but will reduce the overall quality by spreading out the amount of vanillin.

Gardens 11,12 and 13 are advancing rapidly.11 is planted! 12 has most of the cocopeat in and the Gamal stakes follow. 13is waiting its turn.

Laboratory

The crop is beginning to smell very vanilla. Looks good.

Diego has a number of calluses now, having overcome several issues with supplies. The calluses contain new genetic vanilla material, all strong against fusarium.  A quarter of them are put into a process of becoming new vanilla plants, several per callus, while the remainder are split up and put back into solution.  In another month they can be divided again.  This is the first stage of producing our own plants from scratch, a major development that no other company has to our knowledge.

The young plants will go into our nursery for a hardening off process of a month before being ready to go to the gardens.

Property

We are exploring the possibility of putting high end, wooden stilt houses in our gardens. Whether we sell, contract or rent is to be determined, but one advantage is that if somebody ruins the view, we can easily move the house…

Contracts

We have agreed a deal with the Raja Anom of Tabanan, and, we hope, Bupati designate, which will provide us with four hectares of land on which to build a model farm for the instruction of local farmers.  We also receive a factory, in which we shall build a processing and curing plant.  All Tabanan vanilla farmers are entitled to bring us their vanilla, harvested under our supervision, which we shall process.  After processing, we shall sell the vanilla and give the farmer 70% of the proceeds.

This means that the farmers enjoy considerably more return than presently, and we do not need to borrow large amounts of money to buy green vanilla for curing.  It also means that this time next year we shall have a lot more vanilla to sell than currently expected…

Next month

The focus stays on finishing the gardens,while we have identified the next garden to plant.  We are working out the rental contract at present.

Other business

We have agreed to assist Bali Honey in selling their honey.  Bali Honey have hundreds of hives of European bees, which they move around the flowering trees of Bali and Java.  Their honey is described by the food flowers, from mango to acacia. They harvest twenty-four tons per annum. If we can assist them in sales, we shall form a joint venture and invest in their company.  They are very professional.

The bees do not help vanilla at all, but we love bees, they are tokens of health for the countryside.  We want to help, and if we can find a special flower like Manuka, we could make money. If any of our shareholders have contacts for selling honey, please get in touch.

We have located customers for Oud oil inArabia.  They are not interested in the wood, so the next stage will be to create a small refinery where we have a source of wood.  This will be experimental.  Local technology is sufficient, so we do not need a large investment.