Welcoming Young Investors
Welcoming Young Shareholders
Here at Royal Spice Gardens, we are very proud of the good work we are doing, and in particular the way in which we do it. We hope that we are providing a model for others, and an inspiration for young people.
With this in mind, we asked Ton to design us a special certificate gift pack so people could present shares as gifts to young people. I know there is a desire for this, because several of my friends have bought shares as gifts for children. I think this is wonderful.
Originally, we were told we were the Holy Grail of investment, a Triple Bottom Line company. This is a company that is profitable, socially responsible and environmentally green. Well, we sure are, but that doesn’t go far enough because we actually make an effort in five areas. Does that make us a quintuple Bottom Line company?
Let’s count the ways:
- Profitable. Oh yes, as only plantation companies can be, steady, reliable and consistent.
- Socially Responsible. We form local cooperatives to improve farmers’ yields. We share money into the villages.
- Culture. We actively promote culture, 2% of all sales goes to training kids and helping them attend and participate in shows.
- Environmental. We are organic! We make our own fertilizer, apart from a little bat guano. We create our own compost of use ground coconut husks.
- Conservation. Our gardens are havens for wildlife, where we are feeding birds and actively breeding endangered animals for release.
We hope this pack will help get our message across. You don’t have to ruin the environment to make a living.
So a question for you. Is there somebody to whom you would like to give a share?
Our vanilla gardens are immensely profitable, over 70% margin. Plus we have a large and growing market for quality vanilla, which is not as easy to deliver as it sounds.
By caring for the environment, and for the people with whom we live and work, we not only get exciting results from committed workers and partners, but our customers are able to see what we do and they love it. This is why we are transparent. This is why we must spread through the islands.
Our workers are shareholders too, just like you. There is a holding just for the workers. So they reap the rewards of their success, just as you will.
This share may not represent a lot now. Each one is worth one hundred dollars. But watch it rise. And from 2025 you will start to receive dividends. By 2026, the dividends should have exceeded that hundred dollars. We will send you money each year, and when you receive it to spend on whatever you like, you can think of your vanilla farms where everybody gets a share and the environment is nurtured while the wildlife is allowed to breed.
1
Profitable
Investment
Royal Spice Gardens wish to help farmers, and the best way we can do that is to help them make more money. Right now, if they are growing rice, they earn maybe $5,000 a year from a hectare, if they have that much land. And that is before their costs of seed, fertilizer, pesticide and labour.
We don’t tell anybody what to do, or push our knowledge on people. That isn’t nice, especially to proud, clever people. Instead, we take a small part of their land, obviously with their agreement, and grow vanilla on it, with our special raised bed method. We share 20% of the results with them, as rent. This amounts to perhaps $50,000 a year per hectare, ten times as much. And without any costs!
But what we really want them to do is to copy us. And we help, with seedlings, and overseeing their work. We cure their beans for them, and we sell them as well. Their share then comes to $200,000 dollars a year…
This is the best way of helping in the world, with both sides profiting. And because you own this share, you are not only helping the farmers, but you are making money every year as well.
2
Sharing
with farmers
Royal Spice Gardens wish to support culture in our areas, which is the very lifeblood of a people. Indeed, our association with the Royal Families of Indonesia is to promote and nurture culture.
When farmers are poor, they cannot afford to send their children to art school, they have to work.
So the very fact that we are enhancing their income helps.
Further, we create a fund from the sales of vanilla which we use to fund local people to teach their art in the farming villages with which we work.
RSGI will sponsor art shows to be judged by Agung Rai, the famous art developer in Ubud. If any of the artists show potential, we shall sponsor them further.
Currently we are discussing the expansion of these plans through the Kingdoms.
3
Implanted
with culture
Vanilla is actually an orchid, similar to a strap leafed vanda. Now, in the wild the vanilla orchid uses its aerial roots to not just cling to the tree, but to gather nutrients from the moist, humid air. If you give a vanilla orchid fertilizer as if it were an ordinary crop, you weaken and kill it. This is why most commercial farmers think that a vanilla orchid will die after seven years.
We make our own compost, and mix it with cocopeat (ground coconut husk) to create a perfect loose growing medium into which the orchid sinks masses of roots.
We don’t add fertilizer, except an occasional topping of bat guano, gathered from caves,and an occasional watering with water in which grass fed cow manure has dissolved. Pesticides are forbidden, and the workers gather every extra weed as fuel for the compost.
This all ends up not just as a chemical free location, but we are also constantly creating more loam as we mulch the plants. Loam is the best possible way to keep carbon in the ground, the natural way. A vanilla orchid farm is a terrific carbon capture environment.
4
Environmentally
conscious
It is not enough that we make our farms green and safe habitats for a multitude of animals.
We go a step further. We actively breed endangered animals, with support from the Wildlife Department, and the offspring are released into a large wild area near our farms. We currently have a colony of Java sparrows, endangered, and are planning to add a breeding pair of Rothschild’s mynah, the Bali starling.
Of course, you cannot just release birds and expect them to thrive. Instead, we are creating the Otter Café, where people can come, walk or run along the miles of trails through the valley bottom, see some of our unique wildlife, swim in the pool with the otters or sit and have tea and coffee watching the birds on the feeding tables.
Feeding tables are key. They will keep the birds safe as they adjust to a wild existence, as well as attracting visitors to see what is happening. Visitors are important, because they become a source of income for the locals who learn that wildlife can make them more money alive and in the wild than captured and sold. Did I say otters? Yes, rescued from the pet trade, successfully rewilded and breeding on the plantations. But the damn things keep coming back for food!
5
Enhancing biodiversity
through conservation