Archived News

02/12/2008 (Reuters), NUSA DUA, Indonesia - India, the world's second largest vegetable oil importer, could tax crude palm oil shipments within a month, top industry analyst Dorab Mistry said on Tuesday.

02/12/2008 (International Herald Tribune) - A slump in palm oil prices is giving Asia's cash-rich planters a chance to take over smaller companies that mushroomed in recent years as commodities boomed but are now struggling to survive.

02/12/2008 (My Sinchew), Kuala Lumpur - Oil palm smallholders are still making a profit, although smaller, from crude palm oil (CPO) which is at a low level of RM1,500 per tonne at the moment.

02/12/2008 (The Jakarta Post) - Greenpeace strongly criticized the recent annual meeting of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in Bali for being too soft on its "green-washing" members (growers and buyers). Abetnego Tarigan, the newly elected director of palm oil business watchdog Sawit Watch, shared with The Jakarta Post's Kornelius Purba his views about the RSPO, Indonesia's palm oil situation, and his experience as an NGO activist.

02/12/2008 (BBC News) - A major international study says palm oil plantations reduce plant and animal diversity, and do little to reduce carbon emissions.

01/12/2008 (Reuters), Poland - Clearing tropical forests to plant biofuels is a bad idea for the climate and reduces the diversity of animal and plant life, a study found on Monday.

01/12/2008 (Market Watch), Washington - Keeping tropical rain forests intact is a better way to combat climate change than replacing them with biofuel plantations, a study in the journal Conservation Biology finds.

01/12/2008 (The Malaysian Insider), Kuala Lumpur - In the past few years, palm oil has proved to be a growing source of biodiesel, thanks to some pioneering efforts by Malaysian and Indonesian entrepreneurs who had the backing of their governments.

01/12/2008 (Bloomberg) - Indonesia’s inflation rate probably fell to a five-month low in November as fuel and food prices declined, the Central Statistics Bureau may say today.

30/11/2008 (Minneapolis Star Tribune) - Ezekiel Asimba's 25-acre farm lies deep within a tropical rainforest, within view of an active volcano, but the palm oil that he and other growers produce will leave this remote island on cargo ships owned by Minnetonka-based Cargill Inc., destined for grocery store shelves around the world.

29/11/2008 (Minneapolis Star Tribune) - With environmental groups mounting a worldwide campaign against the expansion of oil palm plantations, Cargill is relying on Conservation International (CI), a Washington, D.C.,- based environmental group, as its ecological guide in Papua New Guinea. Two issues stand out: water contamination and protection of the world's largest butterfly, the endangered Queen Alexandra's Birdwing, a biological wonder boasting a one-foot wingspan that lives near Cargill's Oro Province plantation.

29/11/2008 (The Hindu), New Delhi - After remaining in the negative zone for a long spell, edible oils rebounded to close higher up to Rs 800 per quintal during the week under review here after government imposed 20 per cent import duty on crude soybean oil and allowed exports of edible oils.