When Romeo Chan and Henry Raperoga founded Axelum Resources in 1986, they had no money, no investors, and no fancy equipment—just a sharp eye for opportunities and a relentless work ethic.
“Kami ni Henry, talagang bootstrapping. We had no money at all when we started,” Chan recalls. Instead of buying new facilities, they looked for companies shutting down and bid on whatever they could salvage—buildings, equipment, even scrap metal.
One of their biggest finds? The Nissan Philippines plant in E. Rodriguez when it closed. “We bidded for it, yung mga building nila, we sent our people, they sliced all the GI sheets, we marked them one by one, and assembled it in Medina. Yun ang mga building namin doon.”
The same approach applied to industrial tanks. They acquired a million-liter oil tank from Leyte, transported it piece by piece to Medina, and rebuilt it. “They wanted to repaint it, and I said don’t repaint that because that’s a reminder to us where we came from.”
For years, everything they built was second-hand—even third-hand. “That’s how we built the company,” Chan says.
But their scrappy, no-frills approach worked. They scaled up, reinvested profits, and eventually built a brand-new UHT plant, packing for Vita Coco—one of the biggest coconut water brands in the world.
Chan credits their lean startup mindset for their success. “Some people from big companies come in and ask for big budgets. We said no. Sa amin, walang ganyanan.”
His advice? Start lean, run fast, and keep moving forward. “Platform, four wheels, run. Everyday that plant is operating, no matter how imperfect we are, we are winning.”
This article includes quotes from an interview originally published by Esquire Philippines, authored by Henry Ong.
