Just like every pearl, all great ideas start with a seed.

It was in 1989 in a law office in Jakarta that Prof Alex Kerr, Ian Fisher, and Adam Body met, quite by chance, a much respected and retired Indonesian Naval Officer, Admiral Raden Panji Poernomo, (or Pak Poer as he preferred to be called). At this meeting, Pak Poer suggested they try their hand at pearl culture, something that he happened to have some first-hand knowledge of and saw great potential for developing.

This was the turning point that sent the group in a completely new direction. 

The Indonesian archipelago held several sites favorable for producing pearls, but at the time no one was producing them to the high quality that Australian pearl producers could achieve. The group decided that if they could set up a completely independent pearl farm operation using the Pinctada maxima oysters, which could produce consistently high-quality South Sea pearls, they could compete as a major supplier in the international jewellery market. And that is exactly what they set out to do.

Pak Poer had an excellent working knowledge of marine ventures and was instrumental in helping establish the pearling operation. As a well-known and much-respected figure in the Indonesian marine industry, he was able to obtain oyster stock, government support, and industry advice that the Australian partners would have found difficult to access on their own.

With Pak Poer’s help and substantial research from a marine biologist specialising in pearl culture,  they found a suitable site to establish a pearl farm in Kupang, West Timor. 

The Australian directors sought to establish a joint-venture operation by combining two Australian Companies; Nusantaqua Pty Ltd (set up by Kerr and associates), and Tansim (a subsidiary of Atlas Pacific Gold) with the Indonesian Company PT Perintis Ardindo Nusa (of which Pak Poer was President Director) to form a new company,

PT Cendana Pearls. The vision was that under the name Atlas Pacific Gold, it could be listed on the Australian ASX and US Nasdaq stock exchanges.