THIS year, I was not seated inside the grand ballroom for Bursa Malaysia Derivatives’ 37th Palm & Lauric Oils Price Outlook Conference & Exhibition 2026 (POC 2026).
No conference badge dangling from my neck. No corridor coffees. No whispering “What’s your number?” between sessions – that annual ritual where decimal points briefly masquerade as destiny.
So if I were at the CEO Roundtable at POC 2026 in Kuala Lumpur – not physically, but intellectually – this is what I would have heard:
Not price predictions. But discipline. Not bravado. But caution. And beneath the polished corporate phrasing, a quiet but growing urgency.
A range – But not a cushion
POC 2026 did not feel like a crisis conference. Crude palm oil (CPO) is expected to trade somewhere between RM3,800 and RM4,500 per tonne this year.
Some suggest RM3,900 to 4,300 – assuming good weather and a ringgit that does not suddenly grow overly ambitious.
Range-bound. Supported. But not spectacular. When prices are range-bound, structure matters more than sentiment.
If there is a “magic number” embedded within the forecast bands, RM4,000 keeps resurfacing – less a ceiling, more a well-travelled floor. If I may venture a view, I broadly concur with the composite outlook. That said, I shared that I lean gently toward the upper end.
Weather does not consult analysts before arriving – and in palm oil, the sky still holds voting rights.
Stable, yes. But stability is not immunity.
The line-up: Serious weight in the room
POC 2026’s Panel Session 1 assembled a formidable leadership bench under the banner CEO Roundtable: The Next Decade for Malaysian Palm Oil.
The session was chaired by Belvinder Sron, chief executive officer (CEO) of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) – calm, measured, the steady hand guiding a conversation that touched acreage, policy and global markets.
Around her sat four industry heavyweights: Mohd Haris Mohd Arshad, Jeremy Goon, Datuk Fakhrunniam Othman and Lee Jia Zhang.
Collectively, they represented a vast landbank, vertically integrated downstream networks, global trading operations and sustainability systems that stretch from estates to export terminals.
These are corporate leaders I have crossed paths with over the years in policy discussions and in sustainability debates. They speak not from abstraction, but from operational responsibility.
The man who began with an airplane
But before they spoke, the intellectual tone had already been set. Earlier that morning, Datuk Carl Bek-Nielsen, chairman of the MPOC and chief executive director and vice-chairman of United Plantations Bhd
, had taken the stage.
True to form, he did not begin with CPO tonnage or export volumes.
He began with an airplane. United Airlines Flight 173. A landing gear problem. The crew circled. They focused on the visible issue. The fuel gauge was quietly running low. The warning did not penetrate urgency.
The plane crashed. Bek-Nielsen’s message was not about aviation. It was about attention.
Sometimes we fixate on the landing gear while ignoring the fuel gauge. Sometimes we mistake noise for signals.
Trade disruptions. Policy swings. NGO pressure. Regulatory theatrics. Confidence erosion. Demand destruction. Noise. Noise. More noise.
His message was simple: manage the distractions. Focus on what can be controlled.
If I were in that room, I would have underlined that twice. Because every CEO that followed spoke about control.
The soybean shadow
Mohd Haris Mohd Arshad, group managing director of SD Guthrie Bhd, was blunt.
Soybean oil production is rising faster than palm. In recent years, soybean oil has traded cheaper than palm olein with uncomfortable frequency.
When palm loses its lowest-cost advantage, substitution ceases to be theory. It becomes formulation.
Factories do not hold press conferences when they reformulate. They simply switch.
Brazil and Argentina have expanded soybean acreage aggressively.
Malaysia, meanwhile, faces land constraints and ageing palms.
Haris’ answer? Expedite replant pragmatically. Mechanise intelligently. Digitalise operations. Deploy superior planting materials. He also spoke about semi-dwarf genetics that ease harvesting and improve efficiency. These are not cosmetic upgrades - they are cost defence. But discipline must follow genetics.
Yield is the true measurement tape
Bek-Nielsen had earlier reinforced the arithmetic. Malaysia averages roughly 3.5 tonnes of CPO per hectare. Industry leaders achieve nearly double that.
If Malaysia raises national yield to 4.5 tonnes per hectare by 2035, production could increase from around 20 million tonnes to 26 million tonnes - without clearing a single additional hectare.
Six million tonnes. No deforestation. Just discipline.
Oil palm occupies approximately 0.5% of global agricultural land yet produces about 37% of global edible oils.
Replace palm with soybean, sunflower or rapeseed and you would require up to seven times more land.
Yield per hectare, Bek-Nielsen insisted, is the real measurement tape of sustainability. High yields protect forests. Low yields export deforestation elsewhere.
But Malaysia faces domestic biological constraints.
Around 30% of palms are already 19 years or older.
By 2027, more than two million hectares may cross that threshold. Ganoderma fungal disease affects significant acreage.
Ageing palms do not negotiate. They decline.
The pipeline full of leaks
Bek-Nielsen’s slide describing the “pipeline from the fields to the mills” as long and full of leaks was perhaps the most honest slide of the day.
Poor ripeness control. Missed bunches. Incomplete loose fruit collection. Labour shortages. Flooding. “PowerPoint syndrome.”
Better to see an inch of movement than a mile of good intentions. Execution beats aspiration. Every time.
Premiums: Protection or poison?
Goon, CEO of FFM Bhd and chief sustainability officer of Wilmar International Ltd, reframed the risk.
The true danger is not short-term volatility. It is structural premiums.
If palm remains persistently more expensive than alternatives, demand erosion creeps in quietly - particularly in price-elastic markets.
Strong prices support reinvestment.
But sustained premiums increase demand sensitivity.
Growth, he suggested, will increasingly come from specialty fats, oleochemicals, biofuel and industrial applications - not brute volume expansion.
Africa: Demography does not whisper
Bek-Nielsen’s earlier demographic framing was powerful. The world will need roughly 50% more food by 2100. Africa’s population could approach four billion. Nigeria alone records more annual births than Europe and Russia combined.
Per capita oils and fats consumption in Africa remains far below the global average.
If that consumption rises modestly, incremental demand runs into millions of tonnes.
Africa is not romance. It is arithmetic. But arithmetic requires infrastructure, governance, partnership and long-term investment - as Goon cautioned.
Beyond crude
Lee Jia Zhang, chief operating officer of Kuala Lumpur Kepong Bhd, pushed the discussion downstream.
Malaysia cannot rely on crude exports alone. Value must deepen into specialty fats, oleochemicals, surfactants and high-function ingredients.
He also pointed to evolving health narratives in parts of the United States - online debates about seed oils and subtle shifts in consumer perception.
Palm may find opportunity in unexpected corridors.
But Lee’s warning was firm: if yields stagnate while prices remain structurally high, substitution risk intensifies. Productivity and innovation must move together.
Land is people
Datuk Fakhrunniam, group CEO of FGV Holdings Bhd, brought the debate home.
Malaysia’s forest cover remains robust. Expansion is no longer the growth lever. Yield optimisation is.
Biomass. Bioenergy. BioCNG. By-products. The palm tree is more than fruit.
But he also raised a quieter risk: Talent. Youth perception of plantation careers is weakening.
Without modernisation and mechanisation, the industry risks losing its next generation.
Evidence over opinion
On the European Union Deforestation Regulation, Bek-Nielsen did not soften his view.
Malaysia’s sustainability standards have driven a steep decline in primary forest loss. The sector is operationally ready. Yet smallholders lacking documentation capacity risk exclusion.
“A body of opinion is not the same as a body of evidence.” Sustainability must be built in - not bolted on.
Is palm perfect? No. Is palm essential? Yes.
The narrow corridor
If I were physically in that ballroom, I might have nodded at the forecasts.
But reading from afar, what struck me most was not the price band.
It was the narrow corridor between complacency and discipline.
Structural supply growth is slowing. Ageing trees constrain output. Soybean acreage expands elsewhere.
Biofuel policies remain fluid. Africa’s demographic wave builds quietly.
Prices may remain stable. But stability is not immunity. Bek-Nielsen closed with a reminder that stability is not everything - but without stability, everything is nothing.
Fuel gauges before forecasts
If I were at that POC’s CEO Roundtable 2026, I would have left thinking this:
Malaysia does not need more hectares. It needs more disciplined replanting. More mechanisation where practical. More structural support for smallholders. More downstream sophistication. More courage to invest in talent.
More clarity in defending sustainability with evidence - not sentiment. Finding the courage to speak up with honesty and drive. And above all, more willingness to separate signal from noise.
Because the danger is rarely the headline. The danger is drift.
Drift in replanting decisions. Drift in yield discipline. Drift in policy clarity. Drift while competitors expand acreage elsewhere. Drift while demographics quietly reshape demand.
And perhaps most dangerous of all - drift into comfortable retirements, leaving the harder questions for the next generation to untangle.
I was not there. But from what I read, what I saw in their presentations, and what I sensed between the lines, the next decade for Malaysian palm oil will not be decided by price spikes, conference applause or optimistic forecasts.
It will be decided in fields - by whether ageing palms are replaced on time. In estates and mills - by whether losses and leakages are tightened.
In boardrooms - by whether investment flows ahead of complacency. And in policy corridors - by whether we defend facts before narratives harden.
Yes. The sky still holds voting rights. The market still holds memory. Demography still holds inevitability.
But discipline holds destiny. It will not be the landing gear that determines our flight path.
It will be whether we notice the fuel gauge early enough - and act - before circling becomes a habit.
Joseph Tek Choon Yee has over 30 years of experience in the plantation industry, with a strong background in oil palm research and development, C-suite leadership and industry advocacy. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
