As Hong Kong’s economic boom faded and manufacturing moved to China, some long-established, family-run companies preserved their traditions as others innovated to survive. In our new series, HKFP documents the craftmanship and spirit behind the goods that are still proudly “Made in Hong Kong,” as local firms navigate the US-China trade war.
In a decade, Koon Chun Sauce Factory – Hong Kong’s 96-year-old soy sauce manufacturer – will move to a new home. Its 56-year-old Yuen Long facility will make way for private residential developments, part of the Northern Metropolis megaproject that the government says will modernise the rural north.
Daniel Chan, director and fourth-generation co-owner of Koon Chun, met with Hong Kong’s town planning authorities in February to discuss the future of Koon Chun Sauce Factory.
It won’t be the brand’s first relocation. Chan’s great-grandfather founded the factory in 1928 in Kowloon City. It was forced to relocate to the nearby Ta Tit Street during World War II as the Japanese took over the Main Street site to expand the airport.
Koon Chun moved to Yuen Long in 1968, when the British colonial government decided to expand Kai Tak Airport and build housing in the vicinity.
“When the factory was near Kowloon Walled City, it was very small and cramped, so after it moved here in the ’60s, that coincided with Hong Kong’s golden era. That allowed us to scale up our operations,” Chan told HKFP in Cantonese.
More than half a century later, the family-owned manufacturer still retains traditional practices and original equipment to produce its assorted sauce products, from soy sauce to hoisin sauce, from oyster sauce to chilli sauce.
Chan, who read Asian studies at Harvard University in the US and took over the operation around nine years ago, is still determined to continue the factory’s made-in-Hong Kong tradition.
He now runs the facility alongside Alan Tam, who hails from one of the city’s sauce-making families.
Koon Chun’s soy sauce manufacturing process begins with boiling imported Canadian soybeans in vats so large that they can only be accessed from an elevated platform, where workers carefully agitate the beans until they shed their husks.
Once cleaned and sorted, the cooked soybeans are then dusted with wheat and inoculated with a special mould. They are then left to dry and ferment in a dedicated humidity-and temperature-controlled room.
After the soybeans are solidified into pallets on metal trays, they are brought outdoors and placed into fermentation vats where they are broken up and soaked in a salt solution under direct sunlight.
Before the factory started using the rectangular cement fermentation vats, the soy sauce was aged in earthenware crocks.
As they ferment and oxidise under the sun, the mixture takes on a darker colour, eventually becoming soy sauce.
The sauce is extracted, either to be bottled or used as the liquid base for a new batch of beans, to yield a stronger extraction.
Leftover beans are not discarded as a waste product nor used for a second, weaker extraction. Instead, they are utilised for other condiments such as hoisin sauce.
Koon Chun is one of Hong Kong’s “Five Treasures,” a nickname given to the city’s five sauce companies that have the Chinese character chun, which means “treasure,” in their names.
They are still producing locally made soy sauce, even after Hong Kong’s manufacturing boom withered away in the late 20th century, as factories sought cheaper labour in mainland China.
Koon Chun first made its fortune exporting soy sauce overseas, thanks to its founder, Chan’s great-grandfather.
He already had business connections in Panama, where he spent a decade before he moved back to Hong Kong to start some businesses, including the sauce company.
“We were already in the export business when we first opened,” Chan said.
At the time of its founding, Koon Chun was among some 30 to 40 soy sauce and pickling factories in Hong Kong. “With so much supply, there wasn’t enough local demand, so most of them were exporting,” he added.
Several of the factories were located in close proximity to each other, stretching from Kowloon City to Mong Kok, where the aptly named Soy Street is located, until they eventually moved to new premises.
“We even had a workers’ union, which was very uncommon at the time,” he added.
Chan, something of a family historian, said that Yuen Long was a prime location when the factory moved to the New Territories.
“It might have been because of geographical factors. It’s flatland, and there were freshwater streams,” he said.
Koon Chun’s overseas market is a decades-old legacy, based on a “gentlemen’s agreement” to divvy up international markets among the city’s sauce manufacturers.
“That’s why we’re responsible for the Americas. Other than Canada and the US, we also do business with Mexico and Chile,” Chan said.
About half of Koon Chun’s products go to the US, where the brand is a household name among the Chinese diaspora.
He declined to comment on the impact of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, however, citing the sensitivity of the issue.
The blue and yellow labelled bottles can also be found in Amsterdam, Norway, Jamaica, Peru, Qatar, and even Reunion Island, a French territory in the Indian Ocean.
“The ‘made in Hong Kong’ label is a guarantee of quality,” said Chan. “I’ve had people in Norway tell me that our product is better than what they get from other places.”
For Chan, moving the factory will give them an opportunity to refine their operations by implementing state-of-the-art technology.
The move will “thereby [achieve] co-existence of development and conservation of traditional local industry,” according to the Town Planning Board.
