Seminar Report

On March 17, 2014, I was attending a talk entitled Key Sustainability

Challenges and Opportunities in the Malaysian Palm Oil Industry by Mr.
Joseph Tek Choon Yee. The talk started with introducing the speaker, Mr.
Joseph, he is the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director
(CEO&MD) of IJM Plantations Berhad (IJMP). Moreover, he graduated
with a Bachelor of Science (First Class Honours) degree from Universiti
Kebangsaan Malaysia. He was a Commonwealth ODASS/Sime Darby
scholar and obtained his Master's in Philosophy (Plant Breeding) from
Cambridge University, England.
In the talk, Mr. Joseph told us that todays presentation will focused
on three main parts which is Snapshot of the Malaysian Palm Oil Industry,
Challenges

and

Opportunities

and

Some

Food

for

Thought

on

Sustainability. Mr. Joseph started the talk with explaining the history and
background of Palm Oil in Malaysia. Palm Oil had 5,000 years old in the
World, and Oil Palm was first introduced as ornamental plants at 1887. The
first oil palm tree was planted in Kluang, Johore at 1910; means, palm oil
have more than 100 years history in Malaysia. Other than that, Mr. Joseph
also showed us that historical Agri-Tranformation in Malaysia plantation
had changed from the beginning of planted coffee, coconut, cocoa and
rubber to oil palm. This make Malaysia had high expectation for significant
contributions from the palm oil industry. He told us, Malaysias economy
could be sink or growth because of the palm oil industry. Malaysia plays
an important role in palm oil industry by contributing over 11% of global
supply of edible oils and fats. In addition, Mr. Joseph told us that in
Malaysia there are over 600,000,000 oil palm trees, with the ratio of 22
carbon sequestering oil palm trees per Malaysian as compared to 8 sheep
per Kiwi in New Zealand. Indirectly, it shows that planting oil palm tree are
more advantages. Sabah plays an important contribution in Malaysian
palm oil industry. Although, there are four mains edible vegetable oil in the
world, but palm oil have the most high oil yield as compare to others. As
compared to the growing of the world population, statistic shows that the
world needs palm oil for now and the future.
Besides that, in the challenge and opportunities part, Mr. Joseph
explained to us about how to get the profit and sustainability growth

together. To do that, IJM have focus on 3Ps, which are Profitability,

Perception and People. In profitability, the oil palm that planted by IJM
have the highest oil yield according to yield productivity trend in Malaysia
oil palms, means that with the same area of planting, IJM can get more oil
as compared to other. Profitability is related to the second P, people- the
workers. In IJM, Mr. Joseph called them as guest workers because they play
an important role to get high yield oil in the plantation. Besides, talent
management and succession planning are also the main factors that affect
the oil yield in a company. The last P stand for perception on sustainability
in the aspect of socio-environment and corporation responsibility. To
accomplish that, IJM have involve in promoting palm oil to the world by
attending variety of conference and invested quite amount of money in
the research and development department.
Lastly, Mr. Joseph speak about the Some Food for Thought on
Sustainability by telling us there are still a lot of improvement can be done
in the palm oil industry. An example is, there is only 10% of the oil palm
tree use to produce cooking oil, the rest 90% are empty fruit bunches,
fiber, fronds, and so on. A lot of research can be done to improve the uses
of the oil palm tree like using the POME for methane capture, to produce
renewable energy, uses of the EFB in biomass utilization, antioxidant
property in the oil palm tree. Besides that, the EFB in the oil palm tree
contain a lot of cellulose, also could be used to create biofuel. On top of
that, mechanization in oil palms is one of the urgent areas that need to be
improved. In Europe, the plantation of soybean is armed with the latest
technology and this makes them to be productive, optimal soybean
harvest and higher yields. As compared in Malaysia, still lack of knowledge
in the oil palm harvesting section. Thus, Mr. Joseph suggested that
research could be done on the possibility of using Exo-Skeleton Suits for oil
palm harvesting to increases the productive and higher yield.
In summary, Mr. Joseph ended his talk by reminding us, student to
always improve our self, enhance our ICT-literacy, outward personality and
widen our perspective. He told us that, Change is Constant, Extreme is
the New Normal to motivate us to change and improve ourselves from
Good to Better and Better to Best.