Palm Oil Industry Going High Tech to Boost Output

Pound for pound, palm oil has a huge edge over alternatives squeezed out of canola, soybeans or sunflowers.

It’s more versatile -- found in everything from chocolates to cosmetics -- and far more productive. The fleshy fruit yields five times more oil per acre than canola and has eight times the yield of soybeans.

The problem for growers such as Felda Global Ventures Holdings Bhd. is that the tropical tree fruit that yields the oil is harvested mostly by hand and in dangerous conditions that lead to a lot of waste. In Malaysia, the world’s second-largest producer, about $1.2 billion of oil may be left in the field this year. That’s why the industry is working on new technologies like electric cutting machines and pesticide-delivering drones to boost output.

A Kingoya employee prepares an ECUT cutter.Photo: Sanjit Das/Bloomberg

“The industry is desperate to look for the right device to improve labor efficiency,” Palaniappan Swaminathan, chief operating officer at Felda Global’s plantation unit, said in a June 1 interview. “The main thing now is getting the right harvesting tool.”

Unlike soybeans or rapeseed -- waist-high row crops grown on flat fields suitable for tractors and giant harvesting machines -- cultivation of palms is tricky on the sometimes hilly plantations in tropical Malaysia and Indonesia, which combined supply about 86 percent of the world’s palm oil. Over the years, the industry has drawn criticism from environmental and labor activists as well as food companies after vast tracts of rainforest was burned to make way for plantations.

Dirty, Dangerous

While global production more than doubled over the past 15 years to a record as demand surged, farming methods remain dangerous and inefficient. At least one worker is required to service every 10 hectares (25 acres) of palm trees, often wielding sharp sickles on poles to slice high fruit bunches by hand and transport them by wheelbarrow. In contrast, a U.S. soy farmer can work a few hundred hectares using modern equipment.

The scaly-trunked oil palms produce dense bunches of fruit wedged between thorny fronds as much as 60 feet (18 meters) off the ground. The bunches contain 1,000 to 3,000 fruitlets that turn orange-red when ripe. They usually weigh 10 to 25 kilograms (22 to 55 pounds).

Harvesting is dirty, difficult and dangerous -- from laceration wounds to the risk of stings or bites from scorpions and snakes that are common in plantations.

There are some mechanized cutters, but they only work for younger trees less than 16 feet tall and they can’t be used in all types of terrain.

Search for Winner

“Nobody has come up with a machine that a worker can work without having problems with the weight, the vibration and all that,” Felda’s Palaniappan said. “If anyone can come up with that machine for tall palms, that’s going to be the winner. We’re really all out looking for such a device, in house as well as working with other parties.”

Felda, the largest producer of crude palm oil, said it’s tripled spending on mechanization in the past five years, with plans for 10 million ringgit ($2 million) this year.

Another company working on the problem is Kingoya Technologies Sdn. It’s testing a battery-operated, electrical cutter developed by Izmir Yamin, who says the device can double productivity. A worker with his own knife can cut about 200 fruit bunches every four hours. Strapping a Kingoya ECUT cutter on his back would allow him to collect 400 to 500, according to the company.

“It actually reduces the stress of workers trying to pull down bunches manually," says Izmir, who is chief technology officer at Malaysian-based Kingoya. It’s also more reliable and less polluting than petrol-power cutters, he says.