Several years before Indonesia's independence, precisely around the 1940s, in the north of the island of Sumatra, precisely in the city of Balige, a cigarette factory owned by a native of the local area named Busmin Pasaribu was established.
Although at first it still used the traditional hand-rolled style with tobacco raw materials obtained from the areas around Balige to be precise from Deli Serdang and Sidikalang, the cigarette factory, which was given the name "Sedia" already had a name throughout North Sumatra and even in Indonesia. some of the surrounding areas.
Since the 1950s this cigarette factory has begun to modernize its business by carrying out quite sophisticated mechanization at the time, especially considering its location in the interior of North Sumatra.
It was written that in Pematang Siantar, where the ethnic Chinese population is quite large, living in the area, at that time there were also ethnic entrepreneurs who opened a large-scale cigarette factory business. In its later development, this ethnic Chinese businessman not only emerged as a formidable competitor who narrowed the market for "Sedia" cigarettes, but also "turned off" the cigarette factory.
According to informants and our extended family in Balige, at that time there was a group of cigarette entrepreneurs with a certain ethnicity in Pematang Siantar who had bought "Sedia" cigarettes in large quantities and then stockpiled them in a large room like a warehouse that had been prepared previously.
After being stockpiled, the "Sedia" cigarettes were left to rot and spoil. Then these damaged cigarettes are thrown back into the market for consumption by the public.
Since then, people have assumed that the "Sedia" cigarette factory sells rotten cigarettes, resulting in a decrease in the selling power of "Sedia" cigarettes in the market due to the ineffectiveness of "Sedia" cigarettes. This, of course, has an impact on the cessation of the "Sedia" cigarette factories in the entire Balige area.
There is no grudge in writing this article. I rewrote the information that I have obtained plus additional information from several family members, it is only limited to feeling nostalgic and longing for our ancestors, our grandfather, our Opung, who is very influential in Balige and is able to have an impact on others in the surrounding environment.
One of the boys Op. Busmin, namely Op Lyxander Pasaribu is my Opung who migrated to study at UGM Yogyakarta and finally placed a job as a civil servant in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan until he retired. I will write more in the next article the story about Opung Lyxander.
(Some of this information I obtained from an official online document belonging to the Bogor Agricultural Institute, which was researched and written by Glenna Atmadja with the title "Balige: Weaving Entrepreneurs Social Event" p. 89)
