Rachel Marjorie Renucci-Tan and husband Patrick Francois Renucci were leading glamorous lives in Paris where they were based. She founded a real estate investment fund management company based in Hong Kong, Shanghai and London, and was into advising, restructuring, and managing assets worth over a billion US dollars. Patrick, meanwhile, used to own and operate one of the largest printing companies in France.
While Typhoon Yolanda, one of the most powerful tropical cyclones ever recorded, ravaged central Philippines in November 2013, the Renucci couple were sipping champagne in Paris with a view of the Eiffel Tower. News of Yolanda's devastation shocked them.
Both enthusiastic entrepreneurs, the couple knew it was time to give back. Not in Paris, Hong Kong, Shanghai or London, but in Leyte, where impoverished, debt-ridden farmers emerged hopeless from the ravages of Typhoon Yolanda; in the Philippines where Filipinos who depend on rice as a basic staple consume pest and pesticide laden rice.
With a leap of faith and love for each other, they closed their flats in Paris, London and Hong Kong, and arrived in the Philippines for good in 2015.
They found themselves in Leyte, one of the country's top rice producing provinces. It is the second most productive in the Visayas and before Typhoon Yolanda struck, it was the fifth-largest rice producing area in the Philippines.
The couple saw that the opportunity to develop a sustainable business in rice is tremendous in Leyte as Typhoon Yolanda left the province bereft of postharvest facilities such as rice mills, mechanical dryers and warehouses.
In Alangalang, Leyte, they put up Chen Yi Agventures Inc. (CYAI), the country's first sustainable and fully integrated rice processing business. The company produces the Renucci brand rice and the award-winning Dalisay Rice, among others. Renucci-Tan explained that “Chen” is another name for her maiden surname “Tan,” while “Yi” means “100 million” in Mandarin.
Renucci-Tan oversees marketing and finance, while French-Riviera born Patrick — who has over 20 years of experience in operating and managing large factories in France's printing industry — became a rice expert, focusing on technology and operations.
“We decided to invest our life savings in building the most technologically advanced rice processing complex in Southeast. We also dedicated their resources to mechanizing the province for the first time, leasing out transplanters, laser graders, tractors and combined harvesters to farmers, to increase their output,” Renucci-Tan told The Manila Times. “From the start, we wanted a business that keeps on giving. It's not all about making money, it's more about empowering others.”
They started with local seedlings and helped farmers with production techniques to maximize harvest. CYAI used Japanese technology to improve drying, milling, polishing and bagging processes.
Then-President Rodrigo Duterte, who led the inauguration of the Renucci Rice Processing Complex in 2019, said, “What you are doing brings you nearer to beauty and closer to God.”
They also established the Renucci Partnership program which extends low-interest loans in-kind — consisting of high-yielding seeds, fertilizers and pest management solutions — to farmers. This was instrumental in developing a high-tech farming protocol that allowed farmers increase their productivity from 2.5 metric tons per hectare to as high as 8 metric tons. A technical academy was also set up to teach farmers new and high-tech farming systems.
Farmers repay their loans by selling harvest to CYAI at the prevailing market rate. Around 4,000 farmers and their families have already benefited from the Renucci Partnership program and related Renucci paddy procurement program. “In the latter program, CYAI directly procures paddy from the farmers, eliminating the layers of middle persons, thereby increasing the income of the farmers,” Renucci-Tan explained.
The couple sees farmers as partners and key stakeholders in the rice business in order to improve their lives and free them from the debt cycle and poverty. They help farmers raise harvests from 60 bags of rice per hectare to 150 bags per hectare with the use of better seeds, more mechanization and superior planting technology.
“We hope our rice revolution will be replicated across the country and someday soon, Philippines will be self-sufficient and even export rice,” Renucci-Tan said. The Philippines currently imports 3 million tons of rice a year.
“We are very excited about the new government under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. for its clear and steadfast commitment to the agriculture industry, especially with the objective of achieving food security,” said Renucci-Tan.
A last-minute entry in the World Rice Conference in Makati in November 2019, Renucci Rice was named third best in the world, beating 27 other varieties in appearance, texture, moisture, aroma and grain length.
“This gives us a lot of hope because we have experienced many challenges with the way things are,” said Renucci-Tan.
CYAI is also diversifying into natural fertilizer production. Patrick says that agriculture's biggest problem is lack of fertilizer. The Philippines imports 95 percent of the agriculture sector's fertilizer requirements.
“Tests show that our local, environment-friendly fertilizer is cheaper and as good as the more expensive chemical fertilizer,” said Patrick.
When they first met in 2004, Patrick saw in Rachel “a smart, incredible woman working in London” who took the train to Paris to go on a blind date.
Born in Makati and raised in Forbes Park, Rachel Marjorie is the eldest of two daughters. Her maternal grandfather, Ching Ban Lee, is the country's pioneer taipan and founder of Ching Ban Yek conglomerate, where came Philippine Blooming Mills steel plant, La Suerte Cigar & Cigarette Factory, licensed to sell Philip Morris and Marlboro, Blenda Margarine, Baguio Oil and Pioneer Insurance.
From Fujian, China, Ban Lee migrated to the Philippines at 18. He sold vegetable oil, soap, flour and textile on a bicycle around Binondo. He invented a cooking oil formula, sold cooking oil in plastic bags, and transformed Baguio Oil into today's leading cooking oil.
Rachel's mother, Rita Ching Tan, the Philippines' foremost expert on Chinese porcelain, is the daughter of industrialist Ching Ban Lee.
Rachel's father, Edward Tan, a Ching in-law, started his own media company. “Atlas Promotions and Marketing was the largest local advertising agencies in a field dominated by multinationals,” says Renucci-Tan. From Edward came the iconic “Order ni Misis” Baguio Oil tagline.
Edward invented “block timing” and made money during broadcasting off hours, says Renucci-Tan. He imported TV show titles like “Charlie's Angels” and “Little House on the Prairie,” and invested and managed ABC's Channel 5.
From Dad Eduardo, Renucci-Tan learned living her life to the fullest and embracing risk without fear. “My father was very tough on me. I had to work hard and work for money. When I got my diploma, all funding was cut off.
She taught Philosophy for a year at the University of the Philippines. Without a driver or a car, she commuted by bus to Diliman, Quezon City from Makati. “I paid for everything — my food, transportation. My salary was P4,000 a month.”
She also worked at ABC Channel 5 in Novaliches; did networking and reverse block timing by selling slots to suppliers. She increased sales by 300 percent. She was then promoted to program manager but did not get a salary increase.
Renucci-Tan quit after three years and set up Maximedia, an entertainment company that produced shows and concerts. At the height of the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s, she sold her company and opted to get her masteral degree in business administration at INSEAD (“Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires”) in France.
Renucci-Tan considers Hong Kong property tycoon Vincent Lo Shui On, her late father's friend, as her mentor. “He had a huge impact on my life,” she says. It was Uncle Vincent who told Renucci-Tan to start her own business.
