Mass resignation at CIIF-OMG to hurt coco farmers

Coconut farmers will lose direct clients amid the mass resignation at Coconut Industry Investment Fund-Oil Mills Group (CIIF-OMG) in protest to Malacañang's decision to appoint a new president to the oil mills’ group.

Established in the 1970s, CIIF-OMG is a conglomerate of strategically located oil mills and refineries in the Philippines.

Last week, all its board and key officers tendered mass resignation amid the appointment of Rehan Lao — who is currently facing criminal and administrative cases — as the company's new president.

On Friday, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea accepted the resignation of the entire board of the company.

Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) Administrator Romulo J. dela Rosa said in an interview that such event would hurt coconut farmers who have been directly selling their yield to CIIF-OMG.

"CIIF has a good direct buying scheme with coconut farmers. So it is regrettable that this will stop (I hope temporarily) as individual farmer and farmer groups will lose the advantage of direct selling to CIIF oil mills," Dela Rosa said.

To be specific, the mass resignation will result in the closure of three oil mills that CIIF-OMG operates. These oil mills are located in Iligan, Legazpi, and Bauan.

These facilities produce crude coconut oil from copra that is being exported to other countries.

Based on the company's estimate, such closure would result in economic loss of about R400,000 daily.

In the meantime, Dela Rosa said the PCA will facilitate farmer-mill direct marketing with any interested oil mill or coconut integrated processing plant.

As a whole, he said this amount will not have a big impact on the copra prices considering that there are many other players in the coconut oil milling sector.

"Other oil millers will take up the slack. Thus, losses to the industry will be mitigated," Dela Rosa said. "Since CIIF does not control a large share of the market, the impact overall might not be huge."

At present, the total crushing capacity of CIIF-OMG's oil mills accounts for about 10 percent of the country’s coconut oil milling industry.

Its plants have a combined annual crushing capacity of 370,000 metric tons (MT) of copra with a refining capacity of 240,000 MT of different grades of processed coconut oils.

Copra Buying Stations (CBS) are located near coconut farmers and local dealers, to gather and buy the copra. This assures oil mill plants sufficient stocks to keep the manufacturing operations dynamic.

Through the years, the CIIF-OMG has proven to serve global demands for coconut-based fats and oils and raw materials for animal feeds.