PALMOILMAGAZINE, PADANG — A vegetable oil company, Apical, conducted the groundbreaking ceremony for its new refinery and fractionation plant at PT Padang Raya Cakrawala (PRC) on Thursday, July 4, 2024.
Located in Teluk Bayur, City of Padang, West Sumatra Province, the facility aims to enhance Apical’s production capacity to meet growing domestic and international demand.
The refinery and fractionation plant are scheduled for completion in 2025 and will be inaugurated by the Governor of West Sumatra, Mahyeldi Ansharullah. Gunawan Sumargo, Director of Social, Security, and License (SSL) at Apical, will also attend the event.
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The additional refinery capacity, expected to produce up to 3,500 metric tons (MT) of crude palm oil (CPO) per day, and the fractionation plant’s capacity of up to 3,000 MT per day, are crucial for Apical and the Padang region.
“We do appreciate Apical for its investment in City of Padang. We hope this would deliver and provide employment for the peop;le and would guarantee palm cooking oil stability namely in West Sumatera Province,” Mahyeldi said, as in the official statement to Palmoilmagazine.com, Friday (5/7/2024).
Meanwhile, Director of Social, Security, and License (SSL) Apical, Gunawan Sumargo said that the new construction of the refinery would be the third phase of the new expansion that has been starting since 2019.
“By escalating the capacity, the combination of refinery at PT PRC would be reaching 7.000 MT per day while the capacity of fractionation plant of cooking palm oil would be escalating to be 5.900 MT per day,” Gunawan said.
This emphasized that Apical is committed to develop downstream business as same as what the Government of Indonesia wanted to encourage palm oil downstream industries. The initiative also reinforced the position of Apical as one main actor to support the government’s focus in palm oil industry.
PT PRC, which is the biggest refinery in City of Padang, now produces kinds of products, such as, palm olein, stearin, biodiesel, and fatty acid. With the capacity up to 1,2 million MT per year, the capacity could be increasing twice to be 2,4 million MT per year after completing the new one.
It would be strategic and could be expanded to fulfill the domestic needs, and traded to Middle East, Africa, and sub-continent in India. (T2)
