Aggressive promotion of downstream value-adding investments to expand oil palm industry

SANDAKAN: The State Government is trying to expand and deepen the oil palm industry by aggressively promoting downstream value-adding investments aimed at creating new wealth, new businesses and new jobs.

“The key to bringing about all this is the promotion and development of a whole range of small and medium enterprises,” State Industrial Development Minister Datuk Raymond Tan said at the opening of the Conference on Outlook in Palm Oil Technology for SMEs at the Sabah Hotel ballroom yesterday.

Datuk Raymond Tan

In the context of ensuring oil palm becoming a key contributor to Sabah’s development and in a sustained and sustainable way, the providers of resources are needed to identify with the objectives of the Government for the State, the businesses and the people move forward in tandem, Tan who is also POIC Sdn Bhd chairman, said.

“This is really Malaysia’s Economic Transformation Programme in a nutshell. The ETP includes a range of national key economic areas, or NKEAs, one of which cover oil palm. This NKEA has great significance to Sabah because we produce about 34 per cent of the palm oil in the country,” Tan added.

The Government targets to triple the income from the oil palm sector by 2020 through replanting with higher yield oil palm trees, mechanization to improve plantation efficiency, improving oil extraction rate, production of high-value oleo products and to optimize the utilization of oil palm biomass, he continued.

Sabah’s comparative advantages are, amongst others, its availability of raw materials to support a whole range of SMEs. We are looking at investment in oleo chemical plant that will spawn a myriad of SMEs to produce anything from soap to candles, personal care items to pharmaceutical products, Tan said.

“We are looking at SMEs using oil palm biomass to make pellets for fuel, palm kernel cake and palm fronds into animal feed, mill gas into energy and empty fruit bunches into organic fertilizers,” the Minister said.

The Minister noted that the impact of the oil palm was surely and steadily spreading to all of Sabah. Thus the Government is working on encouraging young people to take ownership of the industry, to recognize themselves as stakeholders, not bystanders.

“The development of oil palm-related SMEs will give rise to demand for skilled manpower locally. As it expands, we need local workers for the entire value chain of the industry. Given palm oil’s growing importance among the 12 types of vegetable oils in demand around the world, the evolving of a Malaysian work force with expert knowledge of the industry simply translates into global employment prospects and prosperity,” Tan added.

Also present were POIC Sabah Sdn Bhd CEO Datuk Dr Pang Teck Wai, Department of Industrial Development and Research Director Patrick Tan, EMPA chairman Haji Othman Walat and MPOA chairman Muhammad Tarmizi Taufek.

The guests speakers at the one day programme were Dr Bas Melssen (Agensi Inovasi Malaysia), Professor Luuk van der Wielen from the Netherlands, Gabriele Bacchini, Oleochemical Product Manager, Desmet Ballestra, Dr Loh Yueh Feng (MTIB), Mohd Ramadhan Khalid (MPOB) and Julia Majail (RSPO).

Source: New Sabah Times Online

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