Sustainable Palm Oil Malaysia


Two hours’ drive south of the capital, Kuala Lumpur and we enter the gigantic plantation on Carey Island, 77% of which is owned and worked by Sime Darby. This is one of the flagships of the company’s plantations divi- sion, which has a presence in 15 countries. It is an enormous maze of crops and it is here that we learn about the rather crude, yet skil- ful method for manually extracting the tree’s fruits (a quick shake of the tree deciphers whether it


is good to harvest; should five


fruits fall to the floor, it is ripe and ready to be trimmed by a long-handled scythe), the zero-burning replanting technique (which has now become the industry standard) and the 100-hectare biodiversity area (where 260,000 new trees have been planted in the past two years to establish a kind of ‘gene bank’ for future seedlings and to protect endangered species of plant).


As we pass through the endless rows of palms, some stretching 30 feet into the air, via the crisscross of roads that seem to lead blind- ly, deeper into the plantation in every direc- tion, a very English scene appears. The com- mon barn owl swoops overhead. Imported from the UK during colonial times, the owl is symbolic of the company’s natural pest con- trol. Rats love to chew on palm trees. Owls love to eat rats, which make up 95% of their diet. And thousands of other measures, such as planting pink and white flowered plants at the borders of the plantation to attract preda- tors and insects, eliminate the need to use


pesticides. It is simple and effective. This Skull Island-like facility is also home to one of three research and development centres that the company operates across the country, which are supported by an investment of 3% of the division’s turnover every year. The focus here is on increasing the amount of oil that can be extracted from the crops, with a target of achieving between 26 and 30 tonnes of oil per hectare per year (compared with 2010’s 21 tonnes per hectare) and improving the oil extraction rate to between 23% and 25%. Getting more from less is a core part of the company’s sustainability strategy and it is spending a lot of money studying palm oil genomics. In fact, the company has success- fully assembled 94% of the estimated 1.7B base pairs of the oil palm genome, revealing the genetic codes that make up the plant’s biological make-up.


All that is left to do is decipher these codes


and use them to create new seeds that would possess the best oil yields per bunch, as well as a higher resistance to disease and the effects of climate change. These are exciting times.


e leave the urban setting of Kuala Lumpur and head to the rainfor- ests of Malaysian Borneo, a couple of hours away by plane. The deforestation resulting from palm oil production in this part of the world has been substantial. But just what impact it has had on wildlife and biodiversity has never truly been mapped.


W 4 | Sustainable Business | Sustainable Palm Oil | June 2011 ■


PALM OIL: THE FACTS ■


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The oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) is an ancient tropical plant from West Africa.


Palm oil, referring to the oil extracted from the fruits of the oil palm tree, is an edible plant oil that is naturally red in colour.


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The average oil palm tree can live for about 25 years and reach a height of 30 feet.


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Palm oil is composed of fatty acids, esterified with glycerol just like any ordinary fat. It is also high in saturated fatty acids.


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According to the Oil World journal, the global production of palm oil and palm kernel oil is 48M tonnes.


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Of the 60M tonnes of oils and fats exported around the world, palm oil and palm kernel oil make up 60% of it.


Malaysia has 45% of the palm oil mar- ket share.


Until now.


We land in the humidity of Sandakan and journey to the undergrowth of Sepilok, a small resort in the North-east of Borneo. It is here that we meet Dr Glen Reynolds from the Royal Society in London, who is one of the scientists leading an initiative called the SAFE project, or to give it its full title, the Stability of Altered Forest Ecosystems. It is


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