(Shi Yun on the most left, and Yee Fong beside her).
Carrying bags of ingredients, climbing into tanks for inspections, managing fermentation across thousand-hectolitre brews. Brewing is hands-on, sometimes physical work. It takes focus, patience and the ability to stay calm when things do not go as planned.
Yee Fong has spent 15 years at Asia Pacific Breweries Singapore. She started as a Brewing Technologist and later took on quality, recipes, production teams and now customer service. When she first joined, there were only two women on the production line. Today, there are more women across supply chain, including some she hired and continues to mentor.
One of them is Shi Yun, now a Quality Manager. Yee Fong first hired her as a Senior Quality Analyst Executive. Over the years, with Yee Fong’s guidance, Shi Yun expanded her scope beyond the lab, learned brewing, working on recipes and running product trials.
Trials and resilience in brewing
Brewing can be unpredictable. Machines wear out, the characteristics of raw ingredients may vary, and even small mistakes can affect the final taste of the beer.
Yee Fong recalls a 2015 incident after a major overhaul. Oxygen did not enter the wort as required and eighteen tanks could not ferment.
“It was a serious situation,” she said. “We had to investigate what happened, understand the root cause and recover step by step.”
The pressure was real. Production volumes were large, and decisions had to be made quickly and carefully. The team worked through the issue, identified the cause and stabilised operations.
“When you solve a problem like that, you understand the system much better,” she said. “It strengthens your foundation.”
These are moments they will never forget. Fixing a fermentation issue after days of checking and testing. Seeing quality scores improve after months of consistent effort. Watching the brewery earn recognition as The Most Improved Brewery because our standards kept rising. The satisfaction comes from seeing hard work turn into results.
Breaking the stereotype
Brewing and supply chain are fields that have long been seen as male territory. Yee Fong does not subscribe to that view. She focuses on what the job actually requires.
“Women in supply chain are more than capable of being leaders in this field. The work depends on knowledge, agility and discipline. It is not about gender.”
She explained that the brewery today runs very differently from years ago. Automation and better equipment support much of the heavy lifting. What matters now is understanding the process, knowing how to read the data, making sound decisions, and taking responsibility when something goes wrong. The role calls for focus, technical skill and steady judgement, not a specific gender.
“If you limit yourself first, you close your own path,” she said.
Shi Yun shares a similar view.
“In brewing, you learn through trials. You may not get it right the first few times, but you adjust and try again. Each round teaches you something. That’s how you improve.”
She still remembers advice from her early days working with Yee Fong. “I felt frustrated when the feedback of our recipe kept changing,” she said. “Yee Fong told me not to be discouraged by every comment. Each round teaches you something. You take what worked, fix what didn’t and improve the next time.”
Passing their knowledge forward
Today, Yee Fong mentors Shi Yun, and Shi Yun now guides younger colleagues. It is how most careers grow. Someone shows you the ropes. One day, you do the same for someone else.
Women in supply chain, like any other job, asks for grit, curiosity and a sense of ownership. These traits are not about gender. They come from learning on the job, learning from people around you and earning trust over time.
Cheers to women in beer!