EVERYONE HAS TO START SOMEWHERE. Just take it from Yeo Hiap Seng Ltd, the food and beverage manufacturer and distributor which began as a family-owned business in 1938 under Yeo Thian In who had moved to Singapore to escape the Sino-Japanese war in Zhangzhou.

Its first sauce factory was established at the junction of Outram and Havelock Roads, but got off to a rocky start because of local vendors conducting door-to-door sales of Cantonese-style sauce. During the Japanese Occupation, the Yeo Hiap Seng factory sustained bomb damage, but that turned out to be fortuitous because its stocks were left alone, unlike the other undamaged soya sauce factories.

Yeo Hiap Seng continued production during the Occupation and managed to expand it after the war. A second factory was set up in Bukit Timah in the early 1950s, where the focus became canned food and bottled beverages. As can be seen in the picture above, the new six-acre factory was integral to the expansion of its range of sauces and by 1955, Yeo Hiap Seng was producing around 224,000 bottles of sauce each month.