PALM OIL VALUE CHAIN PROJECT

PROJECT OVERVIEW:

In the 1960s, Nigeria was the world’s leading producer of palm oil. Though the country still remains one of the largest producers, it now meets domestic demand through imports. There are two primary types of palm oil – Technical Palm Oil (TPO) and Special Palm Oil (SPO). The Niger Delta’s 9 states account for roughly 57% of Nigerian palm oil production.

Palm oil is primarily produced in three ways – through the collection of palm fruit (fresh fruit bunches) from wild groves, private plantations managed by individual farmers, and large coproate or government owned plantations. Demand is primarily driven by household consumers who use TPO for cooking and prefer it to SPO because of its tangy flavor due to a higher concentration of fatty acids. Over the years however there has been an increasing demand for SPO to meet the needs of industrial processors that, after refining the oil, sell it to manufacturing industries for use in products such as soaps, candles, pharmaceuticals, lubrications, agrochemicals, paints, and biodiesel.

Data collected in some of the analysis showed that production of palm oil is largely dominated by wild groves which are low yielding compared to large plantations. The ownership structure of the wild groves fail to incentivize investment in their maintenance and upgrading inefficient processing technologies are used. Challenges in managing large estate operations create inefficiencies with lack of coordination between value chain actors.

OUR AIM:
  • To assist the smallholder palm oil farmers and processors in the sector to increase the quantity and quality of their palm oil outputs and increase their sales to earn more income and create new jobs.

OUR APPROACH:

Confronted with the problem of poor agronomic practices and inefficient traditional methods of production and processing, PIND inspired input companies, lead farmers, agro-dealers and fabricators to help palm oil farmers and processors in the sector to:

  • Learn and adopt best management practices to improve oil palm yield
  • Produce premium quality oil using improved processing technology
  • Access improved harvesting technology to reduce harvesting time and loss of fresh fruit bunches
  • Learn about and access new improved seedlings to propagate new plantation
  • Learn business skills and use it to access finance for working capital and purchase of equipment
  • Develop linkages between processors using the improved small scale processing equipment (SSPE) and secondary processors
PROJECT UPDATES
SUCCESS STORIES

1 Comment

  1. Please do you have upcoming projects like these in the months ahead? If yes how can oil palm farmers in Eket be part of this?

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