The oil palm’s reddish-orange fruit yields two kinds of oil. Both are used in a variety of products, some of which you likely use. Before we consider these, let’s visit a palm oil mill and see how the oil is extracted.

Processing the Golden Fluid

As we approach the mill, our tour guide greets us and takes us inside. All around us heavy machinery is operating. The first step in processing the fruit of the oil palm, he explains, is to place it in a huge cylindrical steam oven. Each bunch of fruit has about 200 date-size fruitlets, which are tightly packed together. The steam oven sterilizes the fruit and helps to loosen the fruitlets from the bunch.

The next step is to separate the fruitlets from the bunch by using a machine called a stripper. The detached fruitlets are then sent to a huge blender, where the fleshy outer pulp is separated from the nut. This fibrous outer flesh is then squeezed in a huge extruder, or press, to obtain crude palm oil. After being cleaned and refined, the palm oil is ready to be shipped.

There is, however, a second type of oil. This comes from the nut. The oil palm’s nut must first be cracked open to get at the kernel. Afterward, the kernels are pressed to release their precious liquid. This oil is called palm-kernel oil.

The residue from the kernels is used to produce a nutritious livestock feed. Similarly, after the fruitlets have been stripped away, the remnants of the fruit bunches are returned to the fields to serve as mulch. The fruit’s fiber and shells are also recycled, being used as fuel for the mill’s boilers. Quite an efficient operation!

Two Tons a Day by Hand

Thud . . . thud. Thud . . . thud! The air is filled with the sound of falling fruit bunches as workers on the plantation harvest the oil palms. How do they reach the fruit when it is so high up in the trees?

Using a sharp curved blade that is attached to the end of an extendable pole, harvesters cut fruit off trees that are sometimes the height of a four-story building. On an average day, each worker will harvest between 80 and 100 bunches of fruit and carry them to the roadside for pickup. With each bunch of fruit weighing close to 55 pounds [25 kg], that adds up to a lot of lifting! It takes four and a half tons of fruit to produce one ton of palm oil.