17/01/2011 (The Star Online), Petaling Jaya - Sidhu Brothers Group, the country's leading crude palm oil (CPO) transporter for the past 30 years, has obtained the international ISO 9001:2008 standard.

Sidhu Brothers is the first local palm oil tanker haulage group to secure the international seal of approval.

Commercial director Jimmy Sidhu told StarBiz that the company had managed to isolate many of its competitors and set a standard in the domestic CPO tanker haulage business via its state-of-the-art GPS and GPRS-monitored tankers traffic control centres to curb CPO thefts.

The increasingly high CPO prices, currently trading at above RM3,600 per tonne, had made the CPO transporting tankers a target for thieves, he said.

According to Sidhu, CPO theft has impacted the domestic palm oil industry whereby direct losses from theft alone was estimated at RM328mil in terms of palm oil goods and CPO in 2008.

“On average, one palm oil tanker is hijacked every month. At the same time, the indirect losses from theft due to contaminated CPO also brought about negative effect on palm oil products that were exported,” Sidhu pointed out.

Without proper monitoring devices, it would be difficult to track the modus operandi of the black-market dealers who set up “hotspots” or palm oil siphoning locations.

Sidhu Brothers has a list of hotspots nationwide, Sidhu said adding that the local authorities also needed to rely on intelligence gathering to foil CPO thefts.

“By leveraging on the latest GPS and GPRS technology, the group has gained the trust of many big oil palm plantation companies and millers nationwide.”

Its clients include Sime Darby, United Plantations, Platinum Energy, Prosper Group, Ecocoils, Bell Group of Companies, Dupont & Leosk and Holcim Malaysia.

“Over the past three years, Sidhu Brothers had used and configured the advanced GPS and GPRS based fleet management system supplied by a British company to overcome CPO transportation problems and palm oil thefts,” he added.

Sidhu said the group would expand its capabilities by the launching its second phase development of consignment tracking by the second quarter of this year .

It will include, among others, palm oil consignment management with real-time consignment payload and quality tracking, he pointed out.

The system would enable Sidhu Brothers' clients to issue invoices to their buyers as the CPO was being delivered in real-time, completing the last-mile in the supply chain of palm oil.