“Examples include margarine and shortenings; speciality fats, palm kernel oil-based products; and biodiesel and oleochemicals used in cosmetics and detergents. This provides the company with flexible offtake channels to sell our products where we can get healthy margins,” says Fung in an interview with The Edge Singapore.
Driven by uncertainty over the supply of sunflower seed oil from Ukraine and Russia and Indonesia’s steps to curb palm oil exports, crude palm oil (CPO) prices rose to over RM7,000 ($2,186) per tonne in early March. Since then, on the unwinding impact of Indonesia’s export bans and fears of recession, CPO has lost its gains and is currently trading at around RM3,700 per tonne.
Amid the volatile prices, Indonesia-based planter Golden Agri-Resources (GAR) plans to stay resilient by eking out additional margin through its downstream business. Richard Fung, GAR’s director of investor relations, believes the company can differentiate itself by moving up the value chain with a broad product portfolio of higher value-added food and non-food products.
