A Visit to Oriental Aquatics, of Singapore, by Loh Kwek Leong

A Visit to Oriental Aquatics, of Singapore

by Loh Kwek Leong of Singapore
From Kwek Leong's website: www.killies.com
Aquarticles

Together with the Professor and a few friends, I had the honour of being invited to visit Oriental Aquarium one Sunday. Dr Unnikrishnan and one of the family members of Oriental were very kind to take time off their busy schedules to show us around the place. I must say Oriental is really huge. The farm is easily 5 to 6 times the size of Teo's Aquatics.

For those who may not have heard of Oriental - They are one of the biggest, if not the biggest aquatic plant import/exporters in the world, with a total of over 400,000 square metres of production area and more than 200 staff. The Singapore operation covers 110,000 square metres. Research and development is done here, and it is also the company's information and distribution hub. Besides the one in Singapore, they also have farms in Malaysia and China. Oriental is located somewhere to the north of Singapore in quite a remote area.

Oriental is still very much a family business and usually, they don't entertain walk-in visitors. When I toured the place, I could understand the reasons why. The sheer size of its premises makes it impossible for Oriental to keep an eye on visitors. To do so, they would probably have to double or triple the number of staff. Many of the paths in the farm are also very wet and slippery and a visitor can easily fall and injure himself if he's not careful. I enquired about organised tours but they explained that it would be impossible for them to conduct such tours because plant shipments are usually carried out on weekends and they just don't have enough manpower to spare. So, sorry guys. I tried but you really can't blame them for not allowing visitors.

Anyway, the good folks at Oriental were very nice and they allowed me to take many pictures. Here are some of them:

CLICK ON PHOTOS FOR ENLARGEMENTS, THEN GO "BACK."

The place where plants are sorted out and tied into bundles