Opening Speech for Cafe March 2003

Mingalaba, and may I warmly welcome all of you to the Grand Opening of the Golden Triangle Caf & Bakery I wish to thank their Excellencies Mandalay City Mayor Brigadier General Yan Thein and Area Commander and Head of the Defense Services Academy Major General Ohn Myint, as well as the respected leaders and officials from the Pyin Oo Lwin District Office, Township Office, Army and Police Officers for attending this opening celebration. I also want to express my gratitude and thanks to all the wonderful people of Pyin Oo Lwin who have given Golden Triangle Eco-Resources their help and support over the last seven years. These include our suppliers, the trades people with whom we do business, the farmers who supply us with their coffee, and especially the loyal and very hard working staff and management, both in our coffee factory and here at the Golden Triangle Caf & Bakery. Finally I wish to thank Wirat, the finest Baker in Asia, who has worked day and night to make this Caf and Bakery not just the finest in Pyin Oo Lwin, but in all of Myanmar, and probably in Asia. I now want to take a few minutes to tell you about Golden Triangle EcoResources, our story and how we came to this day. Our company, Golden Triangle Eco-Resources began seven years ago with the goal and the dream of showing that Myanmar could produce the finest coffee in the world and could operate businesss to a quality standard equal to any found in Europe, the US, or the rest of Asia, while at the same time working to support the communities in which we work, and helping to educate and better the lifes of all those involved with our company, whether they be farmers, suppliers, or our own workers. I am proud to say that we have accomplished this.

From a modest beginning cleaning and sorting coffee to export our first container of coffee behind my house here in Pyin Oo Lwin, we now have coffee processing centers in three separate regions, these being Northern Shan State, Southern Shan State, and Chin State. Within these regions we also work with numerous Buddhist Monasteries who have given us their support, by allowing us to use the property around their Monasteries as coffee drying centers and have assisted us with educating their local farmers into modern methods and quality control procedures that have enabled the farmers to get better prices for their coffee and to better their lifes, and those of their families. In return for this support we have made donations and undertaken community projects such as providing assistance for the building of a school in one community, to providing books, blackboards, and desks in another. In another village we helped to construct a small hydroelectric power plant, and in many of the monasteries with which we have worked we have assisted in the construction of buildings on the Monastery grounds. At the same time we have donated and conducted training programs for more then 4,000 farmers in over 50 villages, and at our own cost have written and published books, which have been given to each farmer telling them how to better take care of, and process their coffee, as well as how the modern market works, and how to get the best prices for their coffee and not be cheated, so that they can make more money and better the lifes of their families and children. To date we have successfully exported Myanmar coffee to Japan, Europe, and the United States, and are proud of the fact that for two consecutive years the Govt. of Myanmar, and the Ministry of Agriculture, asked us, as the only private company, to represent Myanmar coffee, as part of an official trade group promoting Myanmar products at the worlds largest food exhibition in Japan.

Just a year ago, our company branched out to develop a coffee roasting operation so that we could provide our Premium export quality coffee to our local home market. One year later we are proud to say that our Caf Fino and Misty Mountain brands are served in over 80% of the finest Hotels and Restaurants in Myanmar including the Strand, Traders, Sedona, Micasa, Mandalay Swan, and Mandalay Hill Hotels, as well as restaurants such as the Oriental House and Le Planteur in Yangon, and Caf City in Mandalay. We have also supplied over 2,000 local teashops and markets with our coffee nationwide. Now, just one year later, after many requests, we have decide to open, here in our beautiful home city of Pyin Oo Lwin, not just Myanmars first truly International Standard Caf, but also Myanmars finest Bakery. Within the next year or so we hope to continue growing, and to open other Cafes and Bakeries, first in Mandalay and Yangon, and then throughout the country. We are also looking at other projects, where we can use our skills and resources to help market and promote other Myanmar agricultural products both domestically and abroad. All of this could never have been accomplished without the help and support of our Government, its officials, at both the National and Community levels, the religious leaders of all faiths in whose communities we work, the farmers and trades people with whom we do business, and again, and most importantly, our loyal and dedicated workers who make up the Golden Triangle Eco-Resources family. Again we thank you all, and invite you to join us in celebrating this, the Grand Opening of the first Golden Triangle Caf and Bakery.