Business
PNG'S Oil Palm's Making Leaps And Bounds
Despite economic gloom, its future looks bright
Amid all the economic gloom in Papua New Guinea, one company is making leaps and bounds and its future looks bright. The success of the company is appropriately highlighted on the cover of its 2002 annual report. The company says it is "meeting the challenges of today, planning for the future and is creating value for shareholders".
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The company is New Britain Palm Oil Limited (NBPOL), a leading plantation and mill operator in the country's oil palm industry. NBPOL reaffirmed its position with a footnote on page one of the same annual report, also saying: "NBPOL is Papua New Guinea's largest oil palm plantation and milling operator.
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"NBPOL has continued to consolidate its position by expanding its core activities of palm oil production.
"NBPOL continues to pursue its objective of enhancing shareholder value, it places high value on its social obligations to the community by seeking to achieve the highest standards on environmental management and working in sensitive cooperation with all sectors."
NBPOL chairman Ahamad Mohamad said in the report that it has had a successful year not only financially but also with the continued developments of the company.
"In 2002, we achieved a record kina profit of over 100 million, at the same time NPBOL has also continued to expand its planted area and importantly we have completed the construction of Papua New Guinea's first palm oil refinery and fractionation plant. "At the end of 2002, the company has over 27,000 hectares of estate managed oil palms and processes fruit from a further 20,000 hectares of oil palms grown by smallholders. We forecast that by the end of 2003, the company will manage and operate over an area in excess of 50,000 hectares, making it a substantial player in the global oil palm industry," Mohamad said.
He said the refinery and fractionation plant will position the company to not only add value and extend its product range, but also open up new potential markets in Papua New Guinea for export. "This marks a significant investment and a result of an undertaking by the company to investigate the feasibility of establishing a refinery, following Kulim's acquisition of the state's shareholding in 1996," he said.
Kulim is a Malaysian oil palm developer and palm oil producer. "It is pleasing to note the continued progress that the company is making in its short and long-term research programmes.
Mohamad said: "Dami Oil Research Station has a reputation as a world-class producer of oil palm seed and our continued progress in the breeding program with the selection of better yielding elite palms will stand the company in good stead for many years to come.
"Whilst much work remains to be done, the company has made significant progress with state of the art research programmes with Cambridge University and Queensland University on mapping the oil palm genome and developing a double haploid oil palm.
"The company is also the first in the industry to operate an oil mill with zero effluent discharge. This significant achievement has been made possible by a novel approach to composting the mill by-products.
"The company also committed itself to environmental stewardship and sustainability and has embarked on a programme to upgrade it environmental management systems to become ISO14001 compliant.
"This process will take until the end of 2003 and it is a measure of how seriously NBPOL takes its responsibility of care towards the environment in which it operates," Mohamad said. Perhaps the only disappointment for the company during the year has been its performance on the stock market.
Mohamad said: "The company's share price on the exchange has failed to reflect the improved market conditions despite the much-improved prices of palm oil reflecting directly towards greatly enhanced profitability. "Since the company listed at a quoted price of four kina per share, the price has continued to trade at levels that simply do not reflect the company's financial and operating strength.
"As shareholders, this is a concern but one which the company has no control. It is important that the authorities relax the foreign exchange controls that act as inhibitors to the flow of offshore funds into the economy.
"When these restrictions are lifted, we believe investors will look more positively at investing in PNG listed stocks. "We look forward to 2003 with a good deal of optimism for continued growth and prosperity."
