Entrepreneur Lim Kok Cheong, 76, the son of impoverished rubber tappers who rose to establish Malaysia’s largest mineral water company, Spritzer, is now setting his sights on China, where he hopes to grow his business.
Lim’s journey from poverty to success is as gritty as his grandparents’ journey from China’s Fujian province to Malaysia in a cargo ship in the 1920s.in a rare interview, Lim recounted with wit and humour his family’s history and his own struggles, a man defined by the odds which he has beaten and not the hardships he was born into.
Lim’s father was six years old at the time, the youngest in a family of three sons. After marrying, his father moved to Batam, Indonesia , where he and his wife worked as rubber tappers removing latex from rubber trees.As conditions worsened during the war and work became scarce in Batam, his parents moved back to Malaya to Kuala Kangsar where they again found work as rubber tappers.
Undeterred by their displacement, his parents found work as agents selling and distributing biscuits in Taiping. Lim worked long hours and diligently saved his money every month until he had enough that – after teaming up with friends and relatives – he could start a business. “There were around 20 people. I put 5,000 ringgit into the company. There were those who put in more.”
But in 1985, tin prices crashed in international markets and the mining industry in Perak collapsed. Many tin miners lost their fortunes overnight, businesses shut and the city’s economy went into a depression. The city’s youths had few employment opportunities.“Ipoh had the highest rate of people who ‘jumped from aeroplanes’,” said Lim, using a term for those Malaysians who left the country in search of any jobs they could find.
The farsighted and quick-witted Lim found his first customer when he managed to convince nightclub owners to buy his bottled water. Ee Young believes Chinese consumers will appreciate Spritzer’s mineral water when they learn how it is produced. STG Group plans to open a deli in Ipoh in 2022. It currently has eight other restaurants spread around Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur and other parts of the country.Today, the Yee Lee Group has grown from its early days as an edible oil re-packer into a producer and distributor.