InfoSAWIT, JAKARTA - Sinar Mas Agribusiness and Food, one of big palm oil plantations and industries in Indonesia, through Research and Development (R&D) Centre and Refinery in Marunda, Thursday (2/3/2023) delivered explanation about how palm oil was researched, developed, and processed to be useful products in daily life.

Crude palm oil (CPO) is processed in refinery. It starts with analyzing the quality, separating sap and degumming, multiplying bleaching agents to absorb color pigment in the oil, filtrating to vanish the rests of bleaching agents.

After getting the color of oil, the next is deodorization to vanish the smell and free fatty acid. In this process, palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD) is produced to be used in biodiesel production – environmental vegetable oil as the alternative of diesel fuel.

Deodorization is processed not to get PFAD only but also to get refined bleached deodorized palm oil (RBDPO). The liquid form of RBDPO is called olein which is used as palm cooking oil while the solid fraction is called stearin which is sold in the form of margarine and shortening. The substance separation is known as fractionation.

General Manager Refineri Marunda, Agus Wijaya said, plant refinery in Marunda has some production systems which process CPO not only to be palm cooking oil but to be biodiesel and solid fraction of CPO, such as, margarine and shortening.

Agus said, there are six refineries of Sinar Mas Agribusiness and Food. They are in Belawan, Lubuk Gaung, Lampung, Tarjun, Jakarta, and Surabaya. Each of them has 15 thousand tons of CPO per day or about 5,5 million tons of CPO per year.

“It means we need additional CPO for about 3 million tons because Sinar Mas could only produce up to 2,5 million tons CPO per year,” he said to InfoSAWIT in the spare time of media gathering Sinar Mas Agribusiness and Food with Forum Wartawan Pertanian (Forwatan) to Plant Refineri Marunda, Thursday (2/3/2023).

Head of Corporate Communications Sinar Mas Agribusiness and Food, Wulan Suling said that palm oil has something to do with the consumers’ products in daily life. The vaster palm oil application, the vaster responsibility for the producer to fulfill.

“We need to make sure that palm oil products used by the consumers should be deriving from good, sustainable, and responsible plantations and process. In Sinar Mas Agribusiness and Food, we are doing the best to fulfill the criteria through our Social and Environmental Policy in our business lines,” Wulan said. (T2)