Baligold

The Baligod family of Kalinga province used their individual expertise to concoct a healthy beverage out of the once lowly and neglected lemongrass.

In the verdant slopes and fields of Kalinga province where the Baligod family grew up, lemongrass (Cymbopogon, a genus of about 55 species of grasses), locally called tanglad, grows in wild abandon. Lilia Baligod Pelayo, and her brothers, Joe, Benny and Ronnie learned at an early age that lemongrass. particularly the East Indian type (Cymbopogon flexuosus) are edible. It has essential oils. Its leaves can be distilled and turned into organic fertilizer, or even made into pouches or specialty paper.
When the Baligod family all became professionals, they decide to give back something th their home province– sort of a homage to their happy child hood days. And that was when they decide to cash in on the wonders of tanglad. Ronnie, the eldest of the Baligod family, is an engineer. So is Benny who also happens to be a member of the Filipino Inventors Society. Lilia, an accountant by profession, became the marketing and finance head of their family corporation, now known as Gold and Grass. Together, they have concocted a premier health drink called Camelya Gold, a mixture of green tea, lemongrass extracts and green honey.

Lilia Baligod Pelayo told us the story behind the growing popular health drink and how they go about running their family corporation.

Excerpts :

How was Camelya Gold developed?
It was developed by a friend, who happens to be a food technologist. It started like a trial-and-error thing. You know, taste tests and all. We called it Camelya Gold. Now, we’re coming up with Camelya Lights. This one has no sugar-pure green honey only.

Where do you get your raw materials?
The plantation of lemongrass is in Cagayan Valley where our factory is also located and we’re now developing in Sariaya, Quezon. The Ceylon tea, we import it from Ceylon. The green tea comes from Palawan and the lemongrass hydrosol comes from us.

How much lemongrass do you use in your production?
We only have around eight hectares of plantation in Cagayan Valley. They are owned by the farmers who plant lemongrass and we use the contract growing scheme in the farming aspect. We buy leaves from them. In one hectare, we could get a minimum of 15,000 kilos of lemongrass leaves per hectare. The other day, there was a German businessman who was connected with a German pharmacy and he was asking if we could supply them 10,000 liters of lemongrass oil per month! We told him we still couldn’t supply them with that volume so we’re really thinking of expanding because right now, we can only produce around 300 liters of essential oil. So, as you can see, there’s a market for lemongrass oil. E, oil pa lang `yon, ha?

What about your volume capacity for your beverage?
We can produce about 2,500 bottles a day. We get the bottles from San Miguel Corporation. We had it custom-made and designed for our specific purpose. Thirty percent of our production cost goes to packaging

You must have invested a lot of money in the family business of yours…
Yes. Ever since we started, we have already spent around Php15 million. We didn’t go to the banks because we really had a hard time getting our loan application approved. That was our initial hurdle. But Quedancor loaned us Php200,000 and we’re thankful for that

But you have technology because your operations are mechanized…
Yes. My brother Benny, who is an electrical engineer, made the innovations for our hydro distilling equipment. The equipment is food grade and we used 316-L of stainless steel. He has the technical know how. We were awarded one of the 12 finalists in the Asian Innovation Awards in Singapore under the equipment category. Our equipment can distill around 10-12 tons a day.

What was your marketing strategy for your health beverage?
We go directly to the restaurants. We used the direct selling approach. Right now, we’re the exclusive distributor of our products. We’re also a member of the Organic Producers and Traders Association (OPTA) and they help sell our products, too.

What makes your drink different from the other health beverages in the market?
It’s both a diuretic and a detoxifier. It’s very good if you have a running fever or a sore throat. The hydrosol itself is medicinal. Hydrosol is the by-product of distillation. At first, we were throwing the hydrosol until someone noticed it. He said, don’t throw it. That’s a gold mine! The primary product is the oil itself. This is all-natural, absolutely no preservatives. Right now, we’re selling the product at Php80 per bottle and we sell it mostly at agri exhibits.

I understand your are also both selling hydrosol and the oil?
Yes. For lemongrass oil, our number one target market is the AB crowd. Of course, they use it for aromatherapy. For hydrosol, we’re targeting the CDE market.

What is the life cycle of lemongrass?
Around 60-75 days.

How many workers do you have?
Around 43 people in the farm. Here in Manila, we have
around 10-15 staff but we’re still training our nephews and nieces to do some technical things.

You got incorporated in 2001. What were the things that you have learned from the business?
A lot! How to deal with farmers, how to handle people, answering inquiries on things like production, etc. I’m an accountant by profession so these things are not really my expertise, but I learned along the way. Our family believes so much in our product so even if we encountered some problems at first, we really didn’t give up. We know that in this business, we would be helping a lot of people in the process. It’s not really all about the money, you know. So having that in mind, we know we’re moving in the right direction.