# Palm Oil Value Chain Primer Field teach-in from the July 2025 sessions. The chain matters because Rimau's expansion path — estate → mill → dealer → refinery — follows it, and because the waste streams are where the value has migrated. ## Plantation outputs - **FFB (fresh fruit bunches)** — the money maker. Sold per ton at a near-standard commodity price. - **Leaves** — brooms and handicrafts. Low demand. - **Trunk wood** — plywood and furniture potential; demand exists but supply is thin. Most is dumped in rivers or chipped (a contributing factor in the Sumatra flooding). ## Mill (CPO factory) outputs | Output | What it is | Where it goes | | --- | --- | --- | | **CPO** | Crude palm oil | Cooking oil, biodiesel, margarine | | **PKO** | Palm kernel oil | Oleochemicals, food | | **PKE** | Kernel expeller | Animal feedstock, fertiliser | | **Palm kernel shell** | Highest export demand product | Power plants in Japan, Korea, the Emirates; activated carbon | | **EFB** | Empty fruit bunches | Fertiliser | | **POME** | Palm oil mill effluent | Open-pit waste; emits methane, pollutes rivers — and the feedstock for palm acid oil | ## Refinery and downstream The refinery buys CPO and produces cooking oil. Its waste (**soapstock**) becomes **palm acid oil (PAO)**, feeding biodiesel, bioethanol and oleochemicals for soap and shampoo. PAO can also be made directly from mill wastewater — which is the business of Rimau's prospective Indonesian partner. See [[Rimau/Indonesia Malaysia and the Regional Map]]. > [!tip] The historic value shift > In the 1990s **CPO was king**. Today the **shell and downstream products** carry the highest value. Owning the downstream is where the money moved — which is also why traceability enforced *from the refinery down* is more adoptable: it follows the money and the end buyer. ## The structural gap Rimau targets Nothing in this chain has a shared record. FFB tracking today is *a smartphone, a receipt printer and a plastic bag under the fruit*, in an environment that destroys paper and electronics. That is the state of the art in an eight-thousand-entity industry. ## Acknowledged blind spot Refinery operations are an admitted gap in the team's discovery, and the decision on whether traceability should be enforced top-down from refineries depends on closing it. ## Related - [[Rimau MOC]] - [[Rimau/Plantation and Mill Economics]] - [[Rimau/Field Discovery Method]] - [[AgriTech & Post-Harvest]] - [[Food Waste as a Resource Stream]]