MY younger sister, Maria Lydia P. Lomibao, proprietress-manager of J. Emmanuel Pastries, this year’s 2007 Gawad Saka Presidential Awardee for High Value Crop Food Processing, is so overwhelmed by demands from abroad of quality pili nut products that she feared she might not meet all the orders.

        As exporter of premium quality pili nuts to Japan and Canada, a 10-tonner van of honey-glazed crispy pili, salted pili with garlic, and roasted pili in foil pouches made in South Korea is waiting to be filled for its initial supply to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia once shipment papers are in order. Now, a trading company from Coopers Plains, Brisbane, Australia likes to join the bandwagon, too, after receiving a parcel of pili nut samples he requested thru the internet a few days ago.

        “The various pili nuts tasted nice so we are interested to place an order. The packaging looks very good also,” so said Mr. David of the Australian company in an email he sent my sister last week.

        Accordingly, Mr. David suggested to “start raising an awareness of pili nuts in Australia and New Zealand through a media campaign” and requested for information materials about the indigenous Bicol nut.

        But he wants an eventual exclusive agreement, saying that they will be spending thousands of dollars for advertising campaign Australia-wide as “we don’t want to spend all the money and doing all the hard work initially, then to have competitors to simply order from you and undercut our prices with the same products.” He estimated that they would need a couple of months to develop the market in Australia and New Zealand. “We anticipate to continue to grow the market and order larger and larger shipments,” Mr. David assured the Lomibao couple.

        To be honest with Mr. David, I -- as my sister’s export promotions manager -- told him that we can only deliver as much. That given our already booked orders for Japan and Canada, the Bicol-grown nuts whose tree farms were heavily damaged by the typhoons six months ago, are of limited supply, which in fact contributes to the Filipino nut’s comparatively higher farm gate price since May this year. We also told him pointblank that initial export orders must be paid in advance to seal an exclusivity agreement. As to pricing, we wrote him: “Our company has settled to our existing price quotation based on volume demand; but we can adjust it when we come close to lowering the cost of raw material, production and shipment.”

        Mr. David was unfazed. He said he would like to test soonest the market for pili Down Under.

        Soon enough, Mr. David emailed my sister to make an initial order for 12,500 bags. “This will include 6,000 bags of honey-glazed pili, 4,000 bags of (pili in) garlic and 2,5000 bags of roasted (pili). This should equate to 1 tonne,” she specified.

        He assured his company can generate 20,000 bags per month in sales but expressed concern that “there may not be enough pili nuts to supply to the Australian and New Zealand market once we develop the market.”

        Incidentally, I was in Pacol last weekend after my good friend Engr. Boy Aman of Enjoy Realty and Metro Naga Chamber of Commerce and Industry that he presides over informed me earlier that the 1,000 pilinut trees at his Haciendas de Naga were now ready for harvesting. This came at a time when our raw pili supplier-compradors from Sorsogon have just started to buy the nuts from farmers and farm owners there who for the last six months had nothing to sell after two strong typhoons mercilessly hit Bicol last year.

        It was fortunate for us that my sister had reserved stocks of raw pili and I was able to complement it with a truck load of the shelled fruit from a comprador’s bodega in Daraga, Albay at an abnormally higher price just to meet the order for Japan last summer. The processed pili nut products were and are to be delivered to Cebu through a connecting flight from Pili Airport to Manila. At Mactan Airport, the Bicol pili nut candies were to join the shipments of dried mangoes from Cebu and dried pineapple from Mindanao for the long haul to the Land of the Rising Sun with the heartwarming inscription, “Manufactured in the Philippines.”

        Meanwhile, my sister’s other product line, the “santan” or coco jam, has to be temporarily retired due to the coconut’s higher farm gate price following the typhoons. Unlike pili, coco jam though starting to become popular among Manila consumers – thanks largely to my sister’s Pangasinense husband Joseph whose industry, perseverance and merchandising acumen are amazingly laudable -- is not a high-end product. Any upward price adjustment would drive off consumers from C, D, and E markets whose every centavo counts.