Harvesting
Palms produce fruit continuously throughout their lives, so we harvest palms throughout the year.
Oil extraction from fresh fruit bunches depends critically on fruit being harvested at an optimum point of ripeness.
Our staff at the mill and from the estates work intensively together to understand exactly the quality of the fruit coming from each estate and beyond that from each division within an estate. We put significant effort into training harvesters to harvest fruit at the right time and supervise closely what they do. We make sure we have enough harvesters to cover our areas regularly and frequently.
The Group invests in making all-weather roads so that harvested fruit can be sent immediately to the mill for processing all year whatever the conditions. Ideally, fresh fruit bunches should be processed within 24 hours of being harvested to produce high quality crude palm oil: oil with low levels of free fatty acids.
