Six Happiness eyes bigger slice of Indon market

BY LINCOLN YAP

SIX Happiness Holdings Sdn Bhd, which operates the Six Happiness group of restaurants, is banking on halal mooncakes this coming mooncake festival to gain a larger share of the Indonesian mooncake market, said its executive chairman Tan Tong Heng. 

He said the company, the 3rd largest producer of mooncakes in Malaysia, had already obtained the necessary licence and certification to produce halal mooncakes, especially pandan-flavoured mooncakes which had proven to be very popular in Indonesia over the last two years. 

“Since we entered the mooncake market in 1996, the business has improved very quickly and this year, the market looks especially good,” he told StarBiz in Kuala Lumpur after signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with DH Hygiene Sdn Bhd. 

(From left): DH Hygiene CEO Danny Lim, MCA Public Services and Complaints Department head Michael Chong and Tan Tong Heng at the MoU signing.

Under the MoU, DH Hygiene will provide the Six Happiness restaurant chain with hygiene support utilising its new IMEC sanitising programme. 

Tan said while Six Happiness had shipped 3,000 boxes of mooncakes to Indonesia last year. 

The shipment for this year's season, from early July to September, was expected to be more than 10,000 boxes with turnover also expected to increase to RM6.5mil from RM5mil last year. 

He said other potential target markets this year included the Philippines and Thailand. 

“Thailand is especially attractive as we are now negotiating a business partnership with Tesco Stores of Britain, which has 33 stores in Thailand out of the 50 stores it has in Asia. Tesco Haadyai is reputed to be the largest Tesco store in Asia,” he said. 

Six Happiness also exported its mooncakes to the United States, as well as to Singapore, Indonesia and Brunei, he added. 

He pointed out that the company was confident of increasing business in the US this year as the mooncakes sold there were usually imported from China and Hong Kong. 

In view of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome scare, the US importer was increasingly looking toward Six Happiness for mooncakes, he said. 

On the MoU signed, Tan said the agreement called for DH Hygiene to not only oversee hygiene matters, including the sanitisation of its six restaurants in the Klang Valley but also its other two food and beverage operations at the Royal Selangor Golf Club and the Kelab Golf Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah. 

DH Hygiene, whose sanitary products had been used by SHH since 1999, would also provide free training for Six Happiness staff in an overall bid to raise the level of sanitising, he said.