Palm Oil Production in Indonesia and Malaysia

The entire Production of the Palm Oil derived from Indonesia’s Rainforest which ranks third in the world, the other two being in the Amazon and Congo basins. According to the Indonesian Palm Oil Association, one third of this production is attributed to smallholder farmers and the remaining to the multinationals.

Borneo and Sumatra are the two islands which account for 96 percent of Indonesia’s Palm Oil production.

According to the World Bank reports nearly 50% of CPO – Crude Palm Oil produced in the country is exported in an unprocessed form, while the remaining is subject to processing into Cooking Oil out of which about 50%  exported and the balance is consumed locally.

Sarawak, with an extensive landbank, established its first palm oil plantation in the eighties. By 1990 the area under palm oil was 55,000 hectares, rising to 330,000 hectares by 2000. By 2012, the total area of palm oil plantations was approximately 1 million hectares.

By contrast, the total planted area in Malaysia, including Sabah but excluding Sarawak is just less than 4 million hectares.

However, while the land available for oil palm plantations in West Malaysia and Sabah are almost exhausted, research shows that Sarawak can plant another million hectares of oil palm plantation by the year 2020.

A unique feature of the Oil Palm is that it produces Two types of Oil – Palm Oil from the flesh of the fruit, and Palm Kernel Oil from the Seed or Kernel. For every 10 Tons of Palm Oil, about 1 Ton of Palm Kernel Oil also obtained. Several Processing Operations are used to Produce the finished RBD Palm Olein that meets the users’ requirements.

The First Step in Processing is at the Mill, where the CPO – Crude Palm Oil  Extracted from the Palm Fruit and PKO-Palm Kernel Oil from Seed or Kernel.

The Second Step is Refining of Palm Kernel Oil to Get a Wide Range of Palm Products of specified quality. The partly and wholly Processed Grades require little further treatment before use, offering end-user a saving in processing costs.

The Third Step is Fractionation of Palm Kernel Oil. In this method we use simple Crystallization and Separation Processes to obtain Solid (Stearin) and Liquid (Olein) fractions of various melting characteristics.

The Fourth Step is Deodorization. In this Process we Remove Odour and FFA through Deodorization. The Olein is Heated and the Vapour, which also known as (PFAD) Palm Fatty Acid Distillate, is removed from the Olein. This Olein  Known as RBD-Refined, Bleached and Deodorized Palm Olein.