"Indonesia to limit size of new oil palm estates"

 The Star, 25 April 2013

Indonesia is working on a regulation to restrict plantation area to 100,000ha for new private palm oil firms. This regulation change comes about to protect small plantation firms from bigger predators who have been using the loophole in the 2007 regulation to set up companies in different provinces

"The World's Biggest Producers Of Palm Oil

Are Running Out Of Land "

 The Financialist 9 May 2013

In a recent report by Credit Suisse , it was stated that nearly 5 million hectares of palm trees are already planted in Malaysia, only between 200,000 and 300,000 are likely to be available in the future while Indonesia is planting less than half of the new field acreage it was in 2003. Together, the two countries supply 85 percent of the world’s palm oil. Meanwhile global demand for palm oil with major bulk going to cooking oil , continues to grow at an 8-percent-a-year clip.

An increasingly vocal environmental movement is also making it harder for large plantation companies to expand as aggressively as in the past in both Malaysia and Indonesia. Indonesia recently renewed its forest moratorium on new permits to clear forests for palm planting. Although there are mixed views on the extension, it is no denial that Indonesia’s total crude palm oil production had declined from 28 million metric tons a year to 26 million during the moratorium period.

The key going forward is now "how can Indonesia can maintain its competitiveness and increase production" Finding solutions to increase yield for Palm Oil Production as the only sustainable solution can no longer be ignored as opposed to expanding land for new plantation.

In March 2013, a high-level official at the Indonesian Agriculture Ministry decreed that Indonesian government is ready to revoke the licenses of palm oil companies in the country if they do not have an Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil certificate by 2014 “Because it is a mandatory, there will be sanctions. We could revoke the licenses of palm oil companies that do not have the ISPO,” said Gamal Nasir, director general for plantations at the ministry.

Winds of change are fast sweeping across the plantation landscape in Indonesia the world's largest palm oil producer.What is the impact to the Malaysian companies in the republic? Many are grappling to obtain ISPO approval and at same time looking elsewhere for their new land bank expansion namely Africa & Central/ South America.