I am like all of you who operate swiftlet farms and I am as hurt by this trashing of the bird nests industry as most my fellow comrades; I do understand that those who have large loans to service are certainly in great pains. But I believe things will turn for the better soon as indeed the Chinese Ambassador to Malaysia assured Malaysians involve in the bird nests industry that the matter will surely be resolve; only that it requires time on procedural matters. In the meantime as we wait, I hope the last two stanzas of Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ode to the West Wind will offer us some optimism for the future:

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Before Chinese import their nests; 80% Indo and only 10% Malaysian but after the incident, Chinese don't take nests like they do before and the sales drop at least 40% and so before the Indo will buy our nests to make the 100% sales but now, the Indo has more than enough nests by themselves.

We need to out source for buyers as without the Indo Buyers here, we need to personally venture to look for oversea market esp. China (Under water if needed) or else, we must make an effort ot have birdnests for BF, Lunch and dinner and talking about it bring me to the time that my wife make agar agar birdnest for tea!! Never do it cos's it's taste bad!!!!

why worry whether indonesian will still come n collect bird's nests or not?...if you are the processor, do u depends on just one source or two?

of course u want to have two suppliers.if indonesia again facing swiftlets migration n caused massive 50% reduction in bird nest's produced then at least they still have another country like malaysia to buy raw nests. and to have two sources of raw materials then they can bargain for better prices. so, that is not a worry.

the main worry is how to get chinese to eat bird's nest again...in large quantity......

without china...bird's nests is nothing...nothing..zero...kosong. worthless....without china, maybe malaysia and indonesia,thailand and vietnam can only have maybe 100 farms all together to supply enough bird nests to other country, any additional farms will just cause oversupply of it.

Read in newspaper that Our PM is very much interested to listen to NGO voices to get a better understanding of what ordinary citizens have to say.....How about NGO for Bird's nest keepers to voice our views?...

Anyone can lead us to set up one?

I think this is very very much very urgent while we wait for nests prices to stabilize...

If I am not mistaken, all swiftlets Associations are NGO as they are certainly not apolitical. It's all depend on whether the controlling members are of which parties and that may create difficulties of getting help from the respective government ministers.

As for the EBN market, the main is China and will be for at least for a hundred years but since the Indo is the biggest EBN suppliers for China and Malaysia is still in the learning stage so we all depend on Indo and since the market drop for at least 40% and now, Indo does have enough nests to supply China's market.

Previously, the very rich in China take the super large nests but these are the area now most affected and these are our nests region and so, only if you sell low, then there are buyers and very choosy, too.

My believe that we can't just wait to die but rather try hard to find or create a new market even in Malaysia but especially Singaporean cos they do have the ability to eat EBN. Rather than to allow buyers to force sell, we sell to local raayat so that they can experiance birdnests at the lowest possible price and you still haven't create a opportunity for buyers to force price down further.

We have created buyers out of Chinese working here buying a few Kilo each time they return home but these "Cari Makan" also being disable by the authorities and maybe, there are spies around.

Better sell lower for local consumption then to allow buyers to get the better of you and in the same time, we created a new group of birdnest lovers which will continue to buy even thought the price increase later cos once they found out the goodness of the birdnests, they will pay and continue to eat birdnests and they shall be your future introducers to local 100 gms buyers... or better home processed birdnests that are 100%+++ CLEAN AND 100%+++ PURE as I always tell my "processed nests" buyers that my" Head is the guaranty" in chinese.

Hope my way will at least help you alittle to pay your interest and obviously not enough for Ah Long.

Hi
Anyone here can check out what is said in Nanyang Siang Pau on 4th Mar about the swiftlet industry.

Thanks.

yes indeed all associations are NGO....a very political NGO indeed...

no need to see far, in selangor, we faced this double sword as our leader is politically link to one party and what happened? we are been labelled as BN supporters...and what ronnie did?...bangkang all the way!!...

We will faced the dilemma if this continue. no one to blame.

---

Added on March 7, 2012, 9:28 amNo one stopping us from selling low actually. We can sell Wholesale price for our bird's nests. The wholesale price now is around RM4k a kilo. we can sell it at that price if we want to. We can pack it into 30g packing and sell for RM120 a pack. and just post it in everyday or group on or milkit or makeadeal or ...damn so many new discount websites that mushrooming in malaysia as 70% discount from retail price .....We can labelled it as

`Farmer's Choice ' or etc...hahahaha.....

and post some pictures of ah mah n ah sum cleaning the nests and ah mah n ah kong cooking the bird's nests and ah chai feed the bird's nest to ah pah...wah....want to cry already.


maybe we can get Najib, aziz, anwar and Lim as our ambassador to promote our products and show to them that this industry helped many malaysians to keep surviving....

This post has been edited by ChanK: Mar 7 2012, 09:34 AM

In 1997, the Asian financial crisis hit us hard but luckily, the ebn industry managed to sustain us and by the second crisis in 2008, the ebn industry was the engine of growth for many. The BN goman did not help us but we managed.

This time, our crisis is entirely man-made. We will recover, slowly but surely but in the meantime, many will suffer. Is the BN people helping or screwing us?

Those with strong cash reserves can withstand this monopoly war but those that took out bank loans and surviving on the narrow margins shall perish. So sad.

You all think this Goman will help us? Do they have the technical expertise to assist? Are they the sharks that will have us for breakfast? So many questions but there seem to be no good answers to boost our confidence.

Thank you coolandy for talking sense rather going on raving and foaming in the mouth and nobody is lessening . Think of a way to sustain and ride out the storm hopelly will soon blow over. I don't think it's the work of BN Goverment trying to destroy our living pls give this paranoid thinking a rest or some may need psychiatric help.

There many factors one of which is the Chinese Goverment trying to curb smuggling of BN into China for so long. The contimenatiom of BN by unscrupulous practices is of cause a concern by the Chinese Authorities and rightly so.

We have to bite the bullet . My fear as I have posted earlier is that this might lead to such a stringent requirements that will be hard to met. Then this inevertablly lead to Monopoly of the imports and trading of BN.

Look at the bright side I am still building for myself 2 more units of BH. If you wait until the price of BN is High then u might miss the boat.This episode has open up opportunity for many to get into BN farming business. land is now available. Contractbprices has gone down. Imcan go on and on.

Thes are just my thought and 2 cents worth. Hope to inspire some! For me full steam ahead.

So true benchai. It is a window of opportunity for those with confidence.

China has been a good client and in a good business relationship, it must be a win-win solution. We don't screw our client if we want a long-term business relationship.

The way things have been going on, many have screwed the Chinese clients by artificially producing so many red ebn. A few of Malaysians were involved in this get-rich scheme. I am sure Indonesians were too.

The good thing is once this mess is cleared, consumer confidence will return and there will be established Standards where all ebn producers need to abide.

EBN is a good product. I don't know of any other protein based product that will not rot without drying or preservatives.

buyers are back with lower price....1.8 again...super white 2.3....

if can hold..hold....but i heard ppls start to dump tons of bn as their patience wear out...shits...will go on months or so....winter indeed for bn industy.

I expected U all can see more boycotts happen from association branches if the nitrite issue can not be solved by June.

This post has been edited by Edward Wai: Mar 8 2012, 06:44 PM

all these caused nests prices to drop :

1) nitrite issue
2) ban on smugling nests to china
3) our local govt dept strict condition in exporting nests to overseas.


even if nitrite issue solved, we still faced the other two issues that still affect the prices of bn. winter plus flooding........dui lah!...

i think we have a better bet to hope that indonesian govt can solved the issue and then indonesian nests processors will come back and collect nests at better prices.......i think keep the boycotts for next round of demolition mode in another 3 years is a better play....just hope that by then all associations branches will not chicken out and ka ki ku kaki...

still the sounds is the killer and time bomb.....even association committee member don't care abt it..just liked in selangor, this member blast his sound in his farm and when advised to lower the sound, he just smile and said he will do that....and after 3 months...he still blasting the sounds liked no tomorrow....typically selfish dude.......and this guy is representing all selangor bn keepers....hahaha........

if we keep our bird nest for few months to 1 year, will the nest become yellowish?

If the nest will become yellowish, how do we prevent it?

Thanks

ps: i've kept mine for 8 months already

Spread them out in a air on room . Put a fan over them and they should dry up to 99 %. Place them in a plastic airm tight container. They will keep for years. Have to be very careful handling them as they become very fragile and will break into pieces if you drop them. Hope this will help.

Agreed with you, I had some nests about 8 years ago and only turn slightly yellowish......but still OK. You do really need to dry properly the nest before storage and best keep them in container at dry area and if you do have cold room, that's the best as aricon keep the air very dry and nests keep in these condition can remain white for longer period of time.

No drying or exposing the nests under the sun cos that will certainly turn the nests brownish. Thanks as we do all share here and more closer in these bad time.



This post has been edited by West Wing: Mar 10 2012, 06:07 PM

Bird's nest move 'good for industry



How is it good for the industry???? and what inspection????

If I can manipulate and have monopoly of the industry, then it must be good for me!

it is good for consumers but bad for us...

with the low prices of bn...i wonder the conventional way of building standalone farm at few hundreds thousands still feasible or not? or is there any other way to build affordable farms that we can recoup our profits in a shorter time?

anyone use the LCM services to build light weight concrete farm? how is the quality after few years? any cracks or leakings? just curious as it is still very attractive on costing itself.less than 100k can kautim and for ordinary keepers,this allow them to bet few times instead of one time sailang.

Hi,

Still thinking of building BH but I guess that it's better to wait and if the price remain or still down, then you need not build one and buying one will be the best alternative. Even cheaper than building your own and need to wait while buying one will save you at least a year of waiting and free nests.

The bad time for us, BH owners also affect many other Buzs and many contractors and suppliers may also be thinking of quitting. Hope that they can come out with a solution to our problem which shouldn't be difficult to solve if they understand the problems.

Everything go up these years and the only thing that go down the drain is our birdnests.

For those of you old sifus whom have been in this industry for >5 years I don't think this hit you hard because most of you have already make back tons of $$$ from your initial investments.

For someone like me whose BH are around 2-4 yrs, just started getting good harvest then this tragedy happen, investment not yet get back and now basically monthly income is 0.

I know in time this will get better, but it is very likely this will take years and not months to resolve. Until then, have to look for other ways to make $$$!!