Bogasari Flour Mills cofounder and former Salim group executive Piet Yap passed away on June 6, five months shy of his 90th birthday. He was a trusted advisor and friend of Malaysian tycoon Robert Kuok since 1958, who recruited Yap from a Dutch commodity firm when Kuok was just starting to build his own commodity trading business. Yap was also instrumental in developing the alliance between Kuok and Salim Group’s late founder, Indonesian Sudono Salim (aka Liem Sioe Liong). The relationship between Kuok and Salim was critical for the later launch of the wheat flour business in Indonesia.
Yap, who had a reputation as a savvy commodity trader, started out in sugar trading. He later cofounded Indonesia’s Bogasari Flour Mills and helped grow it into one of the biggest wheat flour millers in the world. In the process, he was credited for changing the eating habits of Indonesians from mostly rice to more flour-based products, such as noodles and dumplings.
Described as a westernized Sumatran Chinese by Kuok in his memoir, the Malaysian sugar king tapped Yap’s language skills in Dutch, Bahasa Indonesia and English to help him do business in Indonesia. Yap was known for his ability to cultivate and maintain lasting friendships with key business contacts in Southeast Asia. In 2010, he released his autobiography, The Grains of My Life.
Yap is succeeded by his wife, three daughters, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. His only son Timothy Hong Tjoen Yap predeceased Yap. Oldest daughter Wendy Sui Cheng was made president of his real estate company in the U.S. at age 21, where she cut her teeth in business.
Wendy is now at the helm of Indonesia’s Nippon Indosari Corpindo, founded in 1995, a bread business he encouraged her to start, leveraging his flour mill production. Today the company’s Sari Roti brand dominates roughly 90% of the country’s mass market bread market.
The company has a multiyear plan to expand overseas and into retail cafes and the frozen dough business after U.S. private equity giant KKR took a 15% stake worth $100 million as a strategic investor.
