InfoSAWIT, KUALA LUMPUR – Palm oil producer countries, such as, Indonesia and Malaysia should unite to solve crisis potential that hits the industries. According to the industrial experts, palm oil could be a rare commodity in the future because of some factors, such as, decreasing production, decreasing harvests, and purchase from India, as the biggest vegetable oil importer in the world.
The 2024 palm oil production projection in Indonesia showed to decrease, at least one million tons to the previous year. Malaysia’s palm oil production could be stagnant.
The analyst, Dorab Mistry from Godrej International told some worrying issues, such as, unfeasibility of land expansion, bad profile of plantations’ age, decreasing harvest, and technologica decline in palm oil industries compared to the world development.
Vice General Secretary of Council of Palm Oil Producing Countries (CPOPC), Datuk Nageeb Wahab acknowledged that production development in Indonesia is not enough while in Malaysia, there is no significant progress. “Otherwise, the demands on palm oil keep increasing 3,5 percent per year. This would potentially encourage the future increasing price,” he said, as quoted from New Straits Times, Tuesday (23/4/2024).
The unavailable new areas to expand palm oil plantations also raise the needs on oil extraction method more efficiently from nowadays available plantations by escalating replanting frequency. But the lack of investment to replanting program made palm oil production hit the full potential.
CEO Westbury Group, Abdul Rasheed JanMohammad noted that Malaysia lost its markets in Indonesia because of cheaper palm oil. Pakistan now purchases it to Indonesia to fulfill its palm oil needs. Meanwhile India could increase soyoil purchase that could influence crude oil price in the future.
To face the challenges, Nageed encouraged CPOPC to collaborate rather than competing. “When palm oil production is not enough, we should help one to another,” he said.
Thomas Mielke of ISTA Mielke GmbH (Oil World) emphasized that it is significant to accelerate replanting program in Malaysia to get solution on old trees. He also mentioned that the markets would get other alternative if the situation has no solutioin that would potentially enocourage palm oil get more expensive because of the increasing demands in the future. (T2)
