German woodworking machinery with patented technology is now available to process old oil palm trunks (OPT) to valuable wood products

The German company, Moehringer,  located in Germany has been manufacturing wood working machinery since 1885.

The current 4^th generation owner has innovated and patented machinery and technology to convert OPT to valuable wood products for manufacturing furniture, doors, windows, kitchen cabinets and other interior home wood products . Global demand for furniture is currently valued at USD 527 billion and is expected to grow annually by 6.3%.

Valuable wood products produced from OPT are superior to particle boards derived from rubber wood. They are solid,light-weight and designed to attain excellent product features including bending strength, screw holding capacity and fire resistance. Currently, use of OPT is limited to a couple of plants in Malaysia producing low-value plywood products for wooden pallet packaging, cement boards and some low-end use for furniture items with mixed results due to technical challenges that they arefacing.

The valuable wood products are calculated and targeted to be cost-competitive compared to current wood products ofcomparable quality in the market.

Demand for the valuable wood products derived from OPT are assured in affluent regions such as China and NE Asia and the Middle East  where there is no forestry industry and hence all wood products are imported. Demand in Europe is also expected to be strong as the wood products will be from Environmental,Social and Governance (ESG)-compliant enterprises as well as being derived from a circular-economy oriented process, contributing to a sustainable future.

It’s time to have a new life

For years and years, old OPT was burnt in open fields, causing serious cross-border air pollution. Lately, large oil palm plantations have started a more environmentally-friendly way of treating mostly useless OPT by chipping them and spreading or piling the chips in the field.This incurs expenses of course and also harbours pests such as snakes and ratsaside from being a source of plant diseases for the next crop. Decaying woodchips also emit carbon dioxide and methane (greenhouse gases) into the atmosphere.

A new company (“NewCo”) will be incorporated in Singapore to spearhead this new business of supplying innovative machinery and technology to customers which will be oil palm plantation owners as well as any investors desirous of setting up factories to process the old OPT.

An R&D Center and a Technical Service Center will also be set up to cater to this new and high-profit potential business in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, the largest palm oil producers inthe world.

Based on the current 22 million hectares of oil palm plantations in S E Asia and future expansion of the crop up to 2040,this plantation industry can support 140 increasing to 280 factories. A full-scale pioneer factory is being set up in Malaysia and is expected to beon-stream by April 2023. Current OPT processing factory investment potential is about Euro 3.5 Billion.

Investors (customers of NewCo) in the wood working factories processing OPT are expected to have their investments paid back in 5 years’ time as raw materials, OPT, are agricultural waste andtherefore free of charge.

By C S Liew, Pacific Agriscience Pte Ltd., Singapore cs@pacificagriscience.com