June 23 2005 - PLANTATION firm Johore Tenggara Oil Palm Bhd (JTOP)expects its merger with Tradewinds (M) Bhd to be completed this year aftersecuring shareholders’ approval.

Chairman Datuk Abdul Rahman Mohd Ramli said the next step would be to seta date for a shareholders’ meeting.

"We are still finalising the circulars. After issuing them, we willproceed with the EGM (extraordinary general meeting) and once we have theshareholders’ approval, the merger will be on," he told reporters afterthe annual shareholders’ meeting in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

Last year, businessman Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary, who has interestsin both JTOP and Tradewinds, proposed to merge their plantation assets byforming a new company called Jubilant Century Bhd. Jubilant will take overthe listing status of JTOP on the main board of Bursa Malaysia Bhd.

The proposed merger was approved by the Securities Commission on June 10.

Abdul Rahman said JTOP will be among the top largest plantation players inthe country in terms of landbank. It was estimated that the merger wouldincrease JTOP’s landbank size to 138,711 hectares.

As of 2004, its oil palm area stood at 22,054ha.

On JTOP’s financial performance, Abdul Rahman said the profits are likelyto be lower than last year’s due to the lower selling price of palm oil.

"What we can do is to increase the production in our mature plantationareas and adopt the normal cost-cutting method in the estate operations,"he said.

Abdul Rahman added that JTOP has about 1,000ha of matured plantation areacurrently being developed. He expects another 3,800ha to be ready for palmoil plantation and with that, better profits in three years’ time.

For the first quarter ended March 31, JTOP’s net profit dropped nearly 90per cent to RM559,000 while its revenue fell 8 per cent to RM16.18 millionagainst the same quarter last year.