How does the sales process of palm fruits and palm oil work ?
Each hectare with mature oil palm trees produces between 10 and 28 tons of palm fruits per year. Small farmers might produce 10 tons per hectare, large scale plantations using a lot of fertilizer and pesticides produce as much as 28 tons. Palm fruit comes in bunches of 20-35 kilograms of small seeds. These bunches are sold to the oil mill (in Spanish “extratora”). There, they are cooked and oil is pressed out. Eventually about 20% of the end product is crude palm oil. This has a reddish colour. This oil can be sold on the market, either to large users like Unilever or Procter & Gamble, or to wholesalers who will sell it on. Another option is to refine the oil or even create finished consumer products, like margarine.
