The Pilbara region of Western Australia is a vast, rugged expanse of iron-red earth shaped by minerals billions of years old. Its dusty, arid landscape is hardly the place you’d expect to find a 72-year-old Singaporean who spent much of his career navigating the air-conditioned corridors of the duty-free trade. But 13 years ago, as Bruce Cheung began thinking about retirement, it became clear that becoming a landlord and spending his autumn years on the golf course was not his idea of a fulfilling third act. What he craved was reinvention. “So I said to myself, ‘Why don’t I try to do something more meaningful and see how I can survive in a new industry,” he said over video call with CNA Luxury.
At around the same time, the Singapore government began unveiling its 30-by-30 goal, a strategy to produce 30 per cent of the country’s nutritional needs locally by 2030 (the goal has since been revised with new targets for 2035). That seemed to Cheung like a challenge he could get behind. “So I thought, why don’t I try something totally different?” he recalled. “One of the main food groups that Singapore doesn’t have is an ample supply of beef… And that’s when the ideas started coming.”
