The Best Plantation Stock - UP

Many of us may use cooking oil, cosmetic and biofuel, shampoo, icecream, lipstick, chocolate, cereals, canned soup and baby formula... but not many know that all these product contain palm oil. Malaysia and Indonesia both combine generate 80% of palm oil in the world. We try to look who is the best manage plantation in this area. I think for the time being, United Plantation (UP) is one of the best managed estate recognize by Ministry of Plantation, and one of the best smallest company in the world as per Forbes.

Not long ago, I came across United Plantation's annual report and noticed there are a lot of information about plantation, especially about palm oil. I never know manage a plantation in fact need to take care of so many things... A lot of information can be found in their annual report and article in  http://www.businesscircle.com.my. (Business Circle)

Carl and Martin, are the 2 key person lead United Platation (UP) together with their management team. As a company, beside making money, they also care for environment and social issue, going extra miles to balance between people, profit and planet. UP is about 10 times smaller than Sime Darby, but it has the highest yield of palm oil per hectare. Two of their secret weapons:

With the company landbank of about 40,000 hectares, it spend about RM40 million annually on human capital development is consider quite big the amount compare to others. The company also build house for their staff. They also have their own clinic for staff and family member, free of charge.

UP have more than three hundred people doing research for breeding and other related issue faced by plantation, with the intention to be the most efficient palm oil producer in the world. UP generate their own power and water. All the solid waste and pulp are burn in the biomass boiler and converts water into steam that runs turbines to generate electricity. The semi waste is converted into fertilizer. Methane gas from liquid waste are captured at the biogas plant, turn into steam and electricity. That's the way how they provide water and electricity to staff quarters and refinery. This is how they turn waste into something valuable and preserve the environment.

One more interesting thing, they have more than 2,000 pairs of barn owls living in the owl boxes. Each owls eat about 800 rats per year. Beside, they have about 169,000 bushes of yellow flowers that line along the estate road that produce nectar that attract wasps to eat up harmful caterpillars.

One UP is not enough, as there are many poor people need help and community need to have a better life, we need more company to follow UP's as an example, especially take care of environment. Many research and international investors give good rating for UP and I believe as long as they continue with the good job, the stock price will tell the story.