In 1602, the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie - VOC) was established with aim to buy pepper and spices in Asian regions. In most European countries, porcelain was a scarce and luxury item at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but rapidly became very much in demand, and good profits could be made at auctions. Gradually return shipments with commodities from Asia included Chinese porcelain. At first the VOC directors did not send any specific orders for porcelain and merchants bought what they could find at the trade posts of Patani on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula, and Bantam at the tip of northern Java, Indonesia.
