Mustaqim Adamrah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Business | Wed, May 07 2014, 12:14 PM
Palm oil producer PT Astra Agro Lestari (AALI), part of diversified conglomerate Astra International, is building two new palm oil mills in Donggala, Central Sulawesi, and Penajam Paser Utara, East Kalimantan.
The company is spending around Rp 100 billion (US$8.7 million) to Rp 150 billion in capital on each of the mills, according to Astra Agro Lestari director Joko Supriyono.
“That is only for the plants and does not include infrastructure and other [facilities],” he said on Tuesday on the sidelines of the 2014 Forest Asia Summit in Jakarta as quoted by kompas.com.
He said it took one-and-a-half years to build the plants, which would produce up to 45 tons of bulk palm oil per hour.
“Hopefully the plants can commence operations next year — in the middle or in the third quarter,” said Joko, who is secretary-general of the Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association (Gapki).
The company will have a total of 30 mills by 2015.
Astra Agro Lestari has set aside around Rp 3 trillion in capital expenditure this year, according to the company in a public expose on April 17.
This is 7 percent higher than the Rp 2.8 trillion capital spent on last year’s expenditure.
The company, which expects a good outlook throughout the year, plans to spend around 35 to 40 percent of capital expenditure on building new plants, another 30 percent on plant maintenance and the remainder on the development of infrastructure in plantation areas.
Astra Agro Lestari, which operates in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi, had a bad year in 2013.
The company’s net profit was cut by more than a quarter last year to Rp 1.8 trillion, from Rp 2.41 trillion a year before because of lower production in nucleus plantations, a drop in the average selling price of crude palm oil and foreign exchange (forex) losses that resulted from the company’s foreign debts.
The company earlier claimed that the lower production of fresh fruit bunches last year was because of repeated changes of climate.
The company’s shares, AALI, traded on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) at Rp 29,100 apiece on Tuesday, down 1.94 percent from the previous closing.
No comments:
Post a Comment