BONTANG – Realizing the high potential of oleochemical industry, the state-owned fertilizer producer PT Pupuk Kalimantan Timur (PKT) has decided to expand its business to the production of oleochemical products by utilizing the abundant availability of crude palm oil (CPO) in Indonesia, which is the world’s largest producer of palm oil.
Rahmad Pribadi, president director of PT Pupuk Kalimantan Timur, a subsidiary of the state-owned fertilizer producer PT Pupuk Indonesia (Persero), said recently that they are assessing the possibility of establishing an oleochemical plant in East Kalimantan (Kaltim) province.
“We plan to process CPO to fatty acid at the production capacity of 100,000 tons per year. This is our initial step to venture into the oleochemical business. Later we’ll continue with further production of fatty alcohol and fatty amine,” he said in a press release received by Kontan on Thursday, 15 July 2021.
“This is one of our strategies to develop PKT, and to support the government’s program of downstream palm oil development to increase value added in our palm oil industries and maximize the local potential of our oil palm plantations,” Rahmad said, adding that the government’s program of downstream palm oil development can be categorized into three tracks of development, namely oleo-foods, oleochemical and biofuel.
The fatty acid and fatty alcohol are the raw materials for the production of various products, such as soaps, detergents, plastics, rubber, paper, lubricant, coating, foods, candle, and others.
“To secure raw material, we have an oil palm plantation with a total area of around 7,400 hectares. It is operated by PT Kalimantan Agro Nusantara, which is a joint venture of PKT and the state-owned plantation company PTPN XIII,” said Rahmad.
Currently, Indonesia still exports a large amount of its CPO. Based on data from (Gapki), in 2020 Indonesia’s exports of processed CPO products reached 28.27 million tons, while export of oleochemical derivatives amounted to 3.87 million tons.
The Indonesian Oleochemical Producers Association (APOLIN) reported that the total production capacity of fatty acid in Indonesia reached 5.26 million metric tons per year. The production capacity saw no significant increase during the period of 2017 – 2020.
In Kaltim province, the current production of CPO is around 4.3 million tons per year. But so far, there is no processing plant of oleochemical in the province. (*)
Source: KONTAN.CO.ID
