Cheese made Locally in Sabah

I am a sucker for locally produced or homegrown products. Having the chance to study and live abroad there is a main difference between the mindset of our Malaysian consumers and consumers living in other western countries (I am saying the majority in general). Our Malaysian consumers has this mindset that locally produced products are less superior in quality, therefore they are more willing to pay triple the price for products that are imported because they feel it is more high quality.

Whereas, overseas, consumer picks up a products which are made in their own country.The are proud buying products which are manufactured in their own country. Not only that, they know that it would contain less preservative and would be fresher.

I have studied alot of our customer's comments and pattern. Most of them believe that our product should be cheap like other industrial or generic ice creams. Why? because they are made in Sabah. Sometimes forgetting we are selling premium ice cream, equivalent to Haagen Daz quality and we are half the price of Haagen Daz. Why can't it be lower? Well because to produce premium ice cream, we use premium ingredients, most of it which has to be imported because they cannot be found in Malaysia, otherwise those that can be found, we would use because they simply would be fresher. So we pass you the savings in our products and local consumers get to consume very fresh premium ice cream instead of those that has been sitting in shelves for months.

Even before I was a producer of ice cream, I have valued local manufactured products for its freshness. I am not saying all manufactured products are better then imported ones though. Even I am willing to pay for a few ringgit more if I felt that the products were better in quality.

Pardon me for the long story. Imagine how delighted I was when I was walking in Giant Citymall supermarket a few weeks ago and saw Cheese that was locally made! What an achievement I thought. This company Langkah Syabas Sdn Bhd is currently making cheese on a small scale at Kinarut, under the brand name 'Kinarut Beach'. Cheese like yoghurt goes through a fermentation process, therefore I can't say how much fresher it is from an imported one, but then it is a homegrown product and we should all support it.

I bought their Camembert cheese just to try it out to compare to the other imported brand, President cheese. It is not too bad actually, a little salty. I wonder if they are using Frisien Cow Milk or just regular. It would make a difference. My only comment is on their packaging. Their Camembert and Brie is okay but their Feta Cheese were not looking so food anymore on the shelf. Probably can't blame them, its probably due to the refrigeration problems at Giant. However their cheese displayed at Merdeka supermarket were better.

Their cheeses are priced about 40% lower compared to imported ones which is quite reasonable I would say similar to our ice cream products. Although made locally, cheeses like artisanal premium ice cream require a degree of attention and is labour intensive. So I would like to say Kudos to the first Cheese producer in Sabah and perhaps Malaysia. Hope to see other cheeses maybe in the future. Perhaps, cheddar, mascarpone, mozarella, ricotta or blue cheese? Mmmmmmm.... delicious.

We should support local products more, instead of bringing in branded imported products that is highly priced due to currency exchange and import duites, we should be encouraging export of our local brands by supporting first our local brands.