15/09/2008 (Commodity Online), Mumbai - Palm oil is the most favoured edible oil India imports, according to a new statistics released by the Solvent Extractors Association.

It says overall edible oils imports to India rose to 569538 tonnes in August 2008, as against 469234 tonnes in August 2007 while the imports in the first 10 months of the oil year spurt from 3767003 tonnes to 4198550 tonnes.

One of the most overwhelming features of the data is that crude palm oil imports have raced away to 3257586 tonnes in the oil year so far, gaining by 37% over the same period last yea. In terms of the total quantity imported as well, the share of the crude palm oil has spurt from 63% last year to a whooping 77.50% this year.

The share of refined, bleached and deodorized (RBD) palm oil has also spurt from a mere 0.02% to almost 1% this year.

Palm oil commodity has been in a great demand by the domestic market players as oil refineries have eyed the more than 30% in the commodity since it hit an all time high in June this year.

Small and medium-sized edible oil have decided to set up refineries at ports to cut down on the cost of logistics while larger firms already have their refinery units at the ports, and are now considering expanding their fractionation capacities to improve their margins. Fractionation is a process by which the refined palm oil is further split to get liquid olein (used for frying) and solid portion called stearin used in vanaspati and soaps.