ABOUT
THE NEW MOON FAMILY STORY
Our business name, New Moon, signifies a new beginning. The moon represents calmness, beauty, and nurturing. Like the moon, we are two brothers building on the wisdom, maturity and learnings of our father and uncle.
We grew up helping our parents in the family grocery store. We sold beans and pulses among other goods. We learnt about the importance of building relationships with customers, ordering products, and business management.
Our father would often take us with him to meet the farmers in different regions. We would also visit the private businesses that collect our range of beans and pulses. Through this experience, we learnt how Myanmar’s stock exchange works in each region.
These trips helped us to cement relationships with our collectors. The small family businesses work with the farmers to support better production, identify quality produce at the stock exchange, collect produce from the farmers, and truck it to our factory. They are essential to New Moon.
With the sad passing away of my uncle, my brother and I bought the family business. I had a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from Yangon University, my brother had a Bachelor of Arts in English. He manages the company finances, and I run operations.
My father also carefully outlined the unique buying process of raw produce in Myanmar. All beans and pulses are sold through the commodity exchange to protect the grower’s interest. The price is set daily, benched on world markets. Farmers sell their produce to brokers or direct to the exchange centre. Collector companies then attend the commodity exchange to source produce.
“We are two very young individuals successfully working in a highly competitive business – this is our biggest achievement.”
– Mr. Htoon Linn Aung, Director, New Moon Family
STAFF WELLBEING
Our main goal at New Moon Family is to improve the livelihood of our workers along with our company. We have seven permanent employees and 14 daily wage workers, including five women. We are dedicated to caring for our staff and provide opportunities and training for long-term development.
Most of our machine operators are young women who have been with us since we opened in 2018. Women are good operators as they pay extreme attention to detail. All our operators are trained. No other person can operate the machines if they are not trained.
We have an open policy for children to accompany women to work as we have lovely grounds and a safe place for them to play. We provide all food and cooking facilities for our permanent workers, including free lunches. During these difficult times, we have given rice and cooking oil every month to our daily wage workers and aim to provide free, nutritious lunches for them in the future.
We have a 3-storey building with separate rooms, running water, and rest rooms for our permanent workers. With our small-scale farmers, we are doing our best to buy from them or from their brokers. We sometimes give free cow feed to farms near our factory. Our aim is to create a strong, well cared for workforce. Our customers and our employees are the key people in our business.