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Excerpt Article.

Source:  http://www.bicolmail.com/issue/2010/jun24/xgood.html

Malunggay (Moringa) brings good tidings to a family in Naga (Philippines)

By Juan Escandor Jr.

NAGA CITY—Liza Ordas could not forget the slightly bitter taste of a glass of green malunggay (Moringa oeifera) juice their mother would force them to drink at least twice a week when she was just a child.

Now a 40-year-old married mother of two, Ordas claimed the regular doses of malunggay juice she intakes has worked wonders on her health pointing out that never in her lifetime was she ever afflicted with serious illness as far as she remembers.

Ordas’ mother, a native of Tarlac, possesses the folk knowledge that malunggay is very nutritious with medicinal properties which Ilocanos embraced in their cuisine sans coconut milk, as it is prepared here in Bicol, she said.

“The Ilocanos mix malunggay leaves, flowers and young pods in their pakbet, bulanglang and other dishes and the old folks chew and ingest matured seeds to remedy pain and infection,” Ordas claimed.

She said her mother explained that since the leaves are hard to digest she devised a way of extracting the juice by boiling them, then strained and served to them in tall glasses as green liquid.

Malunggay, aside from being considered poor man’s vegetable, is a butt of joke in the locality because its leaves are considered to be indigestible one, remaining intact even after going through the human digestive process.

But in countless researches, Moringa had been acknowledged to possess nutritional value, antioxidant, anti-aging compounds and many more which prompted the World Health Organization to utilize it as cheap health supplement in poverty stricken countries, especially in Africa where it also grows in abundance.

Ordas said she searched far and wide, so to speak, about the Moringa and its products in available reading materials and the internet because she was confident she can make whatever business opportunity awaits her besides providing their family regular supplement to enhance their w ell-being.

The determination to make Moringa work in her favor was non-negotiable as the internet café business was waning and she could not bear to see her capital just in time.

She gathered more information by talking to health experts and met and chatted with a German doctor named Uwe Mueller at moringanews.com about the subject which greatly enhanced his appreciation of the benefits of Moringa. She said Mueller came over here to further promote the benefits of the ‘wonder plant’ as food supplement sometime in 2008.

Ordas, a graduate of Biology and Anthropology courses at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City in 1992, discovered that most of the Moringa products she learned from the internet were from India but she noted the products were so limited which made her optimistic that many more could be developed given its properties.

After about three months researching about Moringa, she and her husband Bimboy sold their internet café business and embarked on the production of capsules from dried powder, and experimented on it by making her family the ‘guinea pigs.’

“In the first weeks, we experienced discharging oily compounds which I later confirmed as one of the cleansing effects of malunggay in our bodies by flashing out fats and toxins from our systems,” Ordas said.

She said the malunggay capsules also cleansed her husband of kidney stones and relieved her mother of hypertension and vertigo by regularly taking them thrice a day.

Ordas said her enthusiasm towards developing products from Moringa was so overwhelming after experiencing first hand its health benefits so that there were times she has to get up in the middle of the night just to take down notes that kept on popping in her head.

“I had ideas and concepts inside my head how to process and extract products from malunggay that I wrote down in details which became the prototype of what I am manufacturing now,” she enthused.

Ordas recalled they closed down their internet café in 2007 to concentrate in producing Moringa products which demand started to grow upon participation in trade fairs of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and through direct selling.

“We started commercial production of Moringa capsules in small volume as order came in one at a time which grew over time prompting my husband to approach a childhood friend to pitch in so that we can expand our production because the capital we have from the sale of the internet café could not fund,” she narrated.

Ordas revealed Bimboy shared to his childhood friend all the trade secrets in producing Moringa capsules when they made a partnership agreement that she said never took off.

She said after a month or so her husband’s childhood friend withdrew his investment by reasoning that he lost interest in Moringa and wanted to concentrate in some other business venture.

To their dismay, Ordas and Bimboy discovered later, after her husband’s childhood friend’s withdrawal from their business venture that their supposed partner had already gone solo in producing his own Moringa capsules.

“He (husband’s childhood friend) copied everything from the procedures to product package which really hurt me. But instead of being discouraged by the thought of facing an unfair competition, I was driven further to develop other products aside from Moringa capsules,” she said.

With renewed determination to beat the odds, they put-up their own factory in their yard in Calauag, Naga City and poured in all the money they had and braced to make new products that were already in Ordas’ drawing board.

“It was a painful lesson (partnership with her husband’s friend) I had to learn but I am confident nobody else but me has the idea of the other products that I am going to make. We resorted to borrowing from our friends to continue our venture until it started to thrive,” she said.

Ordas registered her business venture at the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) under Ordas Kalungay (Bicol word for malunggay) Depot which finally formalized their entry into the manufacturing industry.

She said the DTI has helped them develop their systems from labeling, packaging to marketing with the help of her husband who designed the product presentation.

Ordas explored all avenues to market her products through the internet as her Australian friend gave her free website hosting with the domain name www.kalungaydepot.com aside from posting her Moringa products in e-commerce sites like alibaba.com and sulit.com.ph.

With orders and inquiries about her products streamed in from the internet, she decided to transform her enterprise into a family corporation and registered it with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as Moringa Green Health International Corp.

Ordas said she is fortunate she has friends who lent her additional capital with very low interest rates which enabled her to expand her factory, upgrade her equipment and better package her products. She was also granted P600,000 worth of packaging equipment by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).

She said marketing opportunities has come her way now as she was able to sign an agreement with a Korean buyer who initiated wider product exposure in leading newspapers and magazines in Korea and Japan.

Acquiring the green light this year from Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) of her production process and products, Ordas’ Moringa business that now sells by-products like soap, wine, juice, tea and oil, aside from the capsules, are making inroads into the local and international markets, after only three years in business.

At present, Ordas’ family-run and operated business can produce in a day 500 capsules, 500 bottles of 15 ml Moringa green oil, 100 bars of soap, 100 bottles of wine, 200 bottles of concentrated Moringa juice and 20 kilos of tea upon order.