FGV has proposed to acquire a 37% stake in PT Eagle High Plantations Tbk, Indonesia's third largest listed plantation company controlled by business tycoon Peter Sondakh of the Rajawali Group.
JAKARTA: PT Eagle High Plantations Tbk estimates that its fresh fruit bunch (FFB) production in the fourth quarter of 2016 would rise by 12% compared to the same period last year.
Company secretary Deddy Setiadi said the assessment was based on the young age of most of their oil palm trees and the weakening impact of El Nino this year.
“The rise in the FFB production is expected as most of our palm trees are at a relatively young age. Moreover, it is likely that the El Nino impact will subside during this period,” he said in a statement on Friday.
He said El Nino had affected Indonesia since early last year and caused a significant drop in FFB production from 2015 until mid-2016.
However, it is estimated that the El Nino effect would lessen towards the second half of this year. “This can be seen from our FFB yields during the fourth quarter of 2016 which have increased by 100 per cent compared to the previous quarter,” he said.
Deddy said in November, the company began operations of a palm oil mill in Ketapang Regency, West Kalimantan, with a capacity of 45 tonnes per hour.
“As the majority of the oil palm trees in our estates in Ketapang are ready for harvest, we were able to maintain the consistency of our crude palm oil (CPO) oil extraction rate at over 23.5%,” he said.
Deddy said the company had implemented sustainable management of their oil palm estates as required by the government through the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) certification scheme, with one of its subsidiaries, PT Jaya Mandiri Sukses, obtaining the ISPO certificate recently.
PT Eagle, an oil palm plantation unit of Rajawali Group, is one of the biggest palm oil producers in Indonesia.
It has a total land bank of 425,000ha with 67% in Kalimantan and the rest in Papua New Guinea, Sulawesi and Sumatra.
In July last year, Felda Global Ventures Holdings Bhd (FGV) told Bursa Malaysia that it signed an agreement with Rajawali Group to acquire a 37% stake in PT Eagle for US$680mil (RM2.8bil) in cash and stocks.
However, the deal fell through this year.
A local Malaysian daily reported on Friday that the Federal Land Development Authority (Felda) was believed to have purchased a stake in PT Eagle High Plantations Tbk for US$500mil (RM2.2bil) and that the deal is expected to be announced in the next few days. - Bernama
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