Sime Darby Plantation’s Indonesian unit undertakes aggressive replanting programme

BALI: PT Minamas Gemilang, the Indonesian unit of Sime Darby Plantation, is undertaking an aggressive replanting programme to improve production yield.

Sime Darby Plantation is the plantation and agri-business arm of the Sime Darby Group, and one of its five core divisions.

Minamas president/director Haryanto Tedjawidjaja said the company has been aggressively replanting unproductive trees with higher yielding seedlings, taking advantage of the dismal levels of palm oil prices over the past couple of years.

“We have been aggressively replanting 14,000 hectares annually or seven per cent of our 203,000 hectares of planted area.

“As these young trees start to mature and bear fruit, Minamas estates’ yield should improve further,” he added.

He told Malaysian reporters this on the sidelines of the 12th Indonesian Palm Oil Conference and 2017 Price Outlook here recently.

Haryanto said the aggressive replanting initiative was also in line with its aim of increasing the production yield to 25 tonnes per hectare annually by 2020.

“We target that, by 2020, our fruit yield to average 25 tonnes per hectare annually throughout our estates,” he added.

Minamas owns and operates 71 plantation estates on a total landbank of 270,000 hectares, spread over Sumatera, Kalimantan and Sulawesi, as well as a refinery with a capacity of 2,500 tonnes daily in south Kalimantan.

On outlook, Haryanto said the company is expected to perform better in the current financial year ending June 2017, driven by a better fruit harvest at supportive palm oil prices.

“We expect to see a recovery in fruit production in the months ahead as there had been better rainfall.

“We are happy if palm oil prices continue to trade above RM3,000 per tonne,” he added.

He said in the first quarter ended September 2016, the company’s estate was seeing prices averaging RM2,592 per tonne, higher than the RM2,307 for the last financial year ended June 2016. — Bernama