Malaysia Palm Oil Board, PIPOC – Palm Oil Conference
Kuala Lumpur, November 14th - 17th, 2011
I was pleasantly surprised to be asked to speak and chair a session at this large biannual event in Kuala Lumpur. Apparently the organizers, MPOB, are regular readers of this blog – another surprise; but as I learned the industry participants, both private enterprises and government affiliates are focused on continuing to move further and further downstream including into surfactants. In fact the week prior to PIPOC, we were fortunate to have a representative from the MPOB, Zainab Idris, speak at our ICIS Asian Surfactant Conference in Singapore.
The PIPOC conference was big and extremely well produced and organized. The MPOB staff did a superb job keeping an attendance of around 2,600 delegates interested and co-ordinated for the whole four days. In addition to a number of parallel conference tracks (oleochemicals, food, regulatory, economics), there were tours of plantations and oleochemical plants plus a golf outing (in which I played and won some golf balls wrapped nicely in MPOB paper). The tour in which I participated was a really well done and in-depth visit to the KLK oleochemical plant just outside of KL.
Some important themes from the conference, for me, in no particular order:
Downstream: It seems that many of the plantation and palm oil producers are focused relentlessly on moving further downstream into oleochemicals and beyond, that is to surfactants and specialties. This aim is supported by governmental organizations like Sabah based POIC (Palm Oil Industrial Cluster) and the Pemandu (Performance Management and Delivery Unit) department of the government.
Organisation: The MPOB continues to impress as a very well organized and well run entity. The public / private partnership aspect of what they was particularly evident. In addition the quality of their data services and the regard in which they are held internationally, was impressive. I particularly enjoyed MPOB’s “palm shop” at the exhibition where $100 was well spent on a variety of publications and statistical collections relating to the industry.
Oleochemicals: The oleochemical conference – one of the parallel tracks – managed by Dr. Hazimah Binti Abu Hassan, was clearly a success, judging by the quantity and quality of delegates attending. I was privileged to present the first paper of the conference and to chair one of the sessions. The session that I chaired was a particular honor as it included outstanding speakers from P&G, Nexant and Kao. Some interesting points:
- Kao continues to be very focused on maximizing the commercial utility of palm based methylester sulfonates in their range of consumer cleaning products. Hiromitsu Takaoka gave an outstanding paper that echoed many of the sentiments expressed by Tsuneharu Mukaiyama at the prior weeks ICIS Surfactants Conference.
- Manuel Venegas, head of P&G’s Fabric Care Research in Cincinnati gave an outstanding review of some aspects of sustainability, emphasizing that a blend of a petrochemical branched alcohol based anionic surfactant with palm based MES can have a superior ecological and performance profile to either product formulated alone.
- Andrea Fitzgerald of Nexant, Thailand, gave an outstanding review of the Asian surfactant landscape with a focus on interesting new developments in bio-ethylene among other feedstocks.