Dayang Salhah turns love for kek lapis into business

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INTERESTING: Noh Omar looking at how layered cakes are made during a visit to Dayang Salhah’s Sarawak Kek Lapis factory in Demak Laut Industrial area.

KUCHING: The love and passion for cakes and baking has prompted Dayang Salhah to open her own ‘Sarawak Kek Lapis’ factory in Demak Laut Industrial area here.

She spent RM1.6 million to set up her new ‘Dayang Salhah Enterprise’ and she is still seeking for a bank loan amounting to RM3 million from Agro Bank to purchase better quality machines for baking and packaging.

Yesterday, the Minister of Agriculture and Agro-based Industries Datuk Seri Noh Omar, Malaysian Agriculture Development Research Institute (Mardi)’s director Dr Zabri Abdul Wahid, and Agro Bank’s chief executive officer Dato Ahmad Said visited her factory.

Speaking on her behalf, Dr Zabri said Dayang is aiming to obtain Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) certificate so that her products can be entitled to be marketed widely and exported to other places.

Multi-layered cakes are always on demand as it is a very popular traditional cake in the state due to its unique and amazing designs as well as good tastes; she plans to become the large producer and supplier in the local and national markets in future.

While Agro Bank is looking into her loan application, Zabri said Mardi Sarawak would also like to help serious and hardworking entrepreneurs like Dayang to improve her products to meet global standard level.

As such, he said they would help her to research on producing low calories cakes and prepare proper packaging for longer shelves life.

“We will help her to choose the right ingredients such as natural colouring and flavours,” he said.

For the GMP standard, among others, he said cleanliness and hygiene are  very important and the factory should strictly follow these standards when preparing ingredients and only allowing workers in the premise.

“And the workers must wear appropriate uniform and hand gloves,” he added.