Expanding palm oil horizons, Malaysia taps trans-fat free and cost advantages to spotlight Middle East as major new export market

Earlier this year, MPOC CEO Datuk Dr Wan Zawawi Wan Ismail had already revealed to us the council’s plans to diversify Malaysian palm oil export markets​ beyond depending on its two current major markets of China and India. “The current palm oil market only has two major palm oil exporters – Indonesia takes about 70% and we take about 26% to 27% and it has been this way for some time,”​ he told us. ​ “If we don’t seek to diversify our export markets and find new markets to break into, then this will remain forever stagnant and Malaysia will remain at this 27%. So we need to diversify to break away from traditional markets and this stagnation [and although] India and China remain very important markets to us and will continue to be a focus, we are also focusing energies on other parts of the world [including] Middle Eastern counties such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.”​ MPOC Deputy CEO Belvinder Sron stressed this objective again in a recent MPOC virtual event focusing on palm oil ...