The Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) has offered its service to design mini CPO mill for the country smallholder oil palm farmers.
BPPT Director for Agro Technology, Priyo Atmaji, said on Tuesday that the mini mill, with a capacity of 5-10 tons of fresh fruit bunch (FFB) per hour, is suitable to support a group of smallholder farmers, with combined oil palm acreage of 1,000-2,000 ha.
He said that more than 40 percent of the country’s some 8.2 million ha of oil palm plantation acreage is run by smallholder farmers, some of whom often get frustrated when they could not locate a nearby mill to process their FFB harvest into CPO.
Most of the independent smallholder farmers don’t have their own mill. That’s why, Priyo suggested farmers to form a group and build their own mill with the BPPT technology. The agency has set up a 2-ton per hour capacity mill in Kampar Regency, and a 5-ton per hour mill in Bengkalis Regency, Riau.
He said that the production cost to process FFB into CPO using the BPPT-designed mill is between Rp 300-Rp 500 per kg. So if CPO price is between Rp 8,000-9,000 per kg, the farmers will still have healthy profit as the price of FFB is about Rp 1,000 per kg, and 1 kg of CPO can be produced from 5 kg of FFB. (rei)
