>"Mr Soo discovered that vanilla was in hot demand. It sells for about $600 a kilogram and is the second-most lucrative spice crop in the world behind saffron.

>"Mr Soo discovered that vanilla was in hot demand. It sells for about $600 a kilogram and is the second-most lucrative spice crop in the world behind saffron. "A lot of the big food processors or manufacturers, such as Nestle, are now moving or mandating that they only want naturally grown vanilla, they don't want synthetic vanilla," he said. "I thought, 'Well there's an inelastic demand curve there'." Discovering a voracious market was one thing; the challenge was developing a commercially viable way to grow the sometimes tricky and labour-intensive crop."