The World’s Leader in the Palm Oil Industry : Indonesia

Indonesia, being the world leader in the production of crude palm oil, has been successful in serving the domestic and world market with palm products and palm derivatives. The industry contributes US$17.6 billion through exports in 2012. At present, the demand for crude palm oil has soared high due to the increasing awareness of the varied uses of palm oil. The challenge to countries cultivating oil palm is how to cope with the local and global demand .The focus now is to increase plantation areas to produce a higher volume of crude oil to serve the needs of the world market. Today, the total land area planted to oil palm in Indonesia has reached 9.7 million hectares. This study used data mining and Delphi technique. Data were sourced from public domain websites and several databases. This study determined the gap between production and utilization and to provide information to existing industry players ,policy makers, future investors, and would-be entrants to the industry on the latest trends noting the fast development of the industry not only in Indonesia but also in other Southeast Asian countries. Although Indonesia has been successful in providing the local and international market with palm oil products and palm derivatives, it has to benchmark with other palm producing countries to avoid industry stagnation and to intensify diversification particularly in the development of new edible products to take advantage of the health benefits derived from the use of palm oil.