The Maubon Story

By Ved Luchmun

Ved is a globally well-known business entrepreneur who has won several entrepreneurs and best company awards in the Indian Ocean and Africa. He is the founder of the food processing brand Maubon, one of the most internationally recognised Mauritian brands. During his youth, he started working in factories and similar establishments to earn a living, till he found himself jobless due to closure of those companies. After several attempts to obtain another job, Ved decided to work for himself and set up a factory which processed bananas to banana chips, leading to the birth of Maubon.

It was a bright sunny evening in May and the clock struck four. There was a dry wind blowing that Maubon is a Mauritian brand which is in the business of processing tropical fruits and vegetables. The brand has become recognised for its signature banana chips and various tasty Mauritian snacks and pickles, a big favourite by locals and foreigners, old and young alike.

The name ‘Maubon’ is an amalgamation of two Mauritian words. ‘Mau’ is the abbreviation of Mauritius in writing and is similar to the pronunciation of ‘mo’ which means ‘I’ in Mauritian Creole. ‘Bon” is the word used in Mauritius to label something which is good, resulting in two interpretations of the brand name: Mau (Mauritius) Bon (Good), meaning ‘Mauritius is good’ or alternatively, Mau (I) Bon (Good) meaning ‘I am good’, in the sense that the product is referring to its own high quality.

The brand was founded in Mauritius by Mr. Ved Luchmun in 1993, when he was still a young graduate looking around for job opportunities.

As he lived in the vicinity of banana plantations, he started thinking about what he could do with the fruit. Eventually, he settled on the idea of using the bananas to make snacks, that is, banana chips. However, he decided that right from the start, his suppliers would be the local planters whom he also wanted to help and support. Thus in 1994, Ved established Maubon Foods Co. Ltd, starting with just 4 employees.

Through positive customer feedback, growing customer satisfaction and several innovative measures taken by the company, Maubon started to gain recognition. To keep up with increasing demand for his banana chips, Ved contracted a loan to expand the business and hired 14 more employees. In a short period of time, the company had already achieved local and international recognition for their ‘Maubon Banana Chips’. Exporting banana chips had been unthinkable at the start, but now Maubon was not only catering to international demands but was also substantially assisting small local planters by purchasing their bananas crops.

Additionally, Maubon made it a mission to have a zero-waste policy during the production of its banana chips. To achieve this, it has made use of the entire banana plant, making it one of the few brands to do so:

• the fruit is used for the production of chips;
• the flowers are exported to France where they are used for consumption;
• the peels are sent for compost production which are sold largely to planters and to supermarkets and shops;
• the juice is extracted from trunk of the banana tree which is known for its numerous health benefits and which the brand aims to bottle and sell in the future;
• the dried fibres are sold for the production of handicrafts; and
• the oil used for frying the banana chips are recycled into biofuel.

In 2012, Foods Worth Co. Ltd was incorporated and took over the operations of Maubon Foods Co. Ltd. In addition to boosting the production of banana chips from 5% to 96%. Foods Worth Co. Ltd diversified its operations to include the processing, transformation, value addition and exports of local fresh vegetables and tropical fruits into various assortments of pickles.

This also marked the shift from Maubon’s initial slogan ‘We transform, you eat’ to ‘We transform & share, you eat’ as it diversified its product range for the local and international markets.

In September 2021, Maubon was honoured with the privilege of having a stall representing Mauritius at the Dubai Expo 2020 in recognition of further strengthening its international reach as a Mauritian brand. This was one of the biggest milestones for the brand as it solidified its position as a truly international Mauritian brand.

The company which had initially started with only 2 employees had grown to employ 26 more, including foreign expatriate workers in grades such as main operators, salesman, and administrative staff. A 160 feet2 operation at Union Park which was barely breaking even evolved into an 8000m2 mega factory in the district of Savanne in the southern part of the island.

Maubon has since diversified its product range to 8 different products with 4 types of banana chip flavours available: Natural, Hot & Spicy, Cheese & Onion and Chicken. Its pickle range has grown to offer 12 different flavours including prawn and chili, lemon, tamarin, elephant foot yam, cythere and bilimbi. These all continue to be appreciated internationally in countries such as the Australia, France Germany, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom.

Maubon will continue to grow and provide customers with high-quality snacks and pickles to spread its vision of “We transform & share, you eat” and aim to be the most internationally recognised Mauritian brand. Wherever you may be reading this from, we hope that there is a packet of Maubon Banana Chips within your reach.