PETALING JAYA: The current stable prices of crude palm oil (CPO) at RM4,500 to RM4,900 per tonne offer a good opportunity for local planters to invest some of their profits into mechanisation and automation, says Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) director general Dr Ahmad Parveez Ghulam Kadir.
This is to reduce the plantation sector’s dependency on foreign labour as well as to increase productivity.
Parveez told StarBiz that the usage of mechanisation is an effective solution as it is proven to reduce the dep endency on manual labour.
“While the adoption of mechanisation will require high capital investment, the labour- saving factor achieved through mechanisation helps to justify the investment and will be more effective and economical in the long-term.”
As the national palm oil custodian, MPOB strives to increase productivity without the additional oil palm hectarage in Malaysia, Parveez added.
Some of the efforts included an integrated exploration of existing germplasm collections to detect potential parents with higher yield potential, standardisation of breeding data and tissue culture, production of high-yielding planting materials, the use of biotechnology approaches such as genome technology, gene editing and omics, optimisation of agronomic practices, replanting with better yielding planting materials and the consolidation of smallholders.
To boost productivity and yield, MPOB offers technologies such as good agricultural Practices, balanced fertiliser according to soil suitability, microbe-based biofertilisers, mechanisation for bunch transportation such as Beluga and Rhyno, harvesting machinery “Cantas” as well as support schemes to promote mechanisation in oil palm plantations.
MPOB has also established the Malaysian Oil Palm Training Centre or Plasma which aims to be a centralised training place for local youths.
MPOB also has a geospatial technology, which could perform mapping of land areas that have the potential to produce higher oil palm yields for over 20 tonnes of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) per ha per year, said Parveez.
On the oil extraction rate (OER), MPOB took the initiatives to help improve the national OER which include prohibition against all FFB dealers from purchasing or receiving unripe bunch.
FFB dealers and oil palm millers must also undertake FFB grading based on MPOB oil palm fruit grading manual.
Several approaches have been developed in the milling sector to maximise OER in terms of technology advancement and improve milling efficiency via minimising oil losses with a target of below 1.5%, he added. On whether the current high CPO prices will erode local palm oil exports moving forward, Parveez said “it is still too early to assess the situation.”
“The current increasing trend of CPO price is influenced by the increasing trend of other competing vegetable oil prices in the global market.
“Apart from the current price situation, the demand for palm oil will also depend on the existing developments within the importing countries’ markets,” he explained.
Citing India, Parveez said the country is expected to increase its intake of vegetable oil including palm oil in the coming month to cater for higher demand during the Diwali festival, which will be celebrated in early November.
“The increase in palm oil export levies by Indonesia for September to US$166 (RM694) per tonne from US$93 (RM389) per tonne generally will boost demand for local palm oil as importers shift palm oil imports from Indonesia to Malaysia,” he added.
As for the CPO price forecasts for 2021 and going into 2021, Parveez expected the current high price to last if the fundamental and market sentiment factors continue to support the prices.
“Starting from November to December 2021, prices are expected to stabilise around RM4,000 to RM4,500 per tonne,” he said.
For the record, MPOB said the highest average daily price in the history of Malaysian palm oil industry was recorded at RM4,996.50 per tonne on Oct 6, 2021.
Meanwhile, the highest traded contract registered with MPOB was also on Oct 6, 2021 which hit RM5,060.00 per tonne.