KOTA SAMARAHAN: Sarawak Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation Authority (Salcra) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Sime Darby Plantation (SDP) at its head office here yesterday.
The MoU is to form a collaborative framework to establish, strengthen and encourage synergistic commercial co-operation along the palm oil value chain.
Acting general manager Joseph Blandoi signed on behalf of Salcra while SDP was represented by its chief strategy and innovation officer, Dr Shariman Alwani.
It was witnessed by Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas who is also Salcra chairman and Sime Darby Plantation executive deputy chairman and managing director Tan Sri Mohd Bakke Salleh.
Speaking to the media later Uggah said Salcra was now doing its own planning to move forward.
“We need to enhance our management capability to increase productivity.
“When we can achieve this, we can increase the dividends to our landowner participants.
“We also want to go beyond our current 54,000 hectares of plantations all over the state. We still have a lot of NCR land available for us to expand into and this is our forte,” he added.
He said the collaboration with SDP was a very important step and a great privilege.
“Sime Darby Plantation is the world’s biggest oil palm plantation with 600,000 planted hectares throughout the country (including 34,000 hectares in Sarawak) and in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Liberia.
“It too has a total of 72 mills and is the world largest producer of Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) with a production capacity if over 2.46 million metric ton.
“It is involved in the full spectrum of the palm oil value chain, from upstream to downstream activities, R & D, renewables and agribusiness,” he disclosed.
“So, we in Salcra realise they have rich experiences that they can share with us as we move into the future,”
Uggah said Salcra on its own had five mills while a new one was coming.
With its total production of 342,000 metric ton of crude palm oil, it should be able to support refinery activities.
He added in its expansion plan it was looking into rubber plantations and cattle rearing in estates and described these two as areas of great potentials.
On the other hand, Uggah said SDP too might want to look at areas in the state where they could participate in expanding on their plantations.
Meanwhile, according to Mohd Bakke, there were many areas that SDP had identified in the collaboration framework.
“The intention here is to strengthen the oil palm industry by harnessing and taping the technologies which are the key components of the value chain.
“We are looking at selling our planting materials. They are high yielding materials in the sense that they can produce up to eight tons of oil per hectare compared to the industry average of about four tons.
“We also provide plantation management services, consultancy services and good agronomic practices,” he said.
He said SDP too was ready to work closely with Salcra to improve on its sustainability credentials and to link it to different corners of the world in terms of supporting services.
“This arrangement is a useful platform for both organisations to get more from the industry value chain,” he said.
He added that with Salcra having its fertilizer plant in Bintulu, it would make good business sense for SDP to procure certain amount of fertilizer from there.
“So from a commercial standpoint, this arrangement will benefit both sides,” he said.
