PALMOILMAGAZINE, NUSA DUA – The atmosphere at the Bali Nusa Dua Convention Center (BNDCC) was notably different, as researchers, academics, and plantation stakeholders gathered for the Pekan Riset Sawit Indonesia (PERISAI) 2024 on Thursday (3/10/2024). The event was organized by the Palm Oil Plantation Fund Management Agency (PO PFMA) to strengthen collaboration between the research community and the palm oil industry in Indonesia.
In his opening remarks, PO PFMA Director Eddy Abdurrachman highlighted the importance of research in addressing challenges facing the palm oil industry, particularly in promoting sustainability and countering negative campaigns against the strategic commodity.
“The palm oil research and development program is our effort to enhance synergy between the upstream and downstream sectors. We aim to foster interest in palm oil research from an early stage, especially among students, to build a resilient and sustainable palm oil industry,” Eddy stated, as reported by Palmoilmagazine.com.
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Since 2015, PO PFMA has supported research and development initiatives through its Grant Riset Sawit program. This program backs various research projects, from open selection phases to student-level initiatives. Eddy emphasized that the program is designed to boost plantation productivity, improve efficiency, enhance smallholder welfare, and create new, environmentally friendly products and markets.
For almost a decade, PO PFMA funded 346 research contracts that involved more than 1.200 researchers from 88 research institutions in 20 provinces. The cooperation would not stop in the research only but also would continue to the commercialization process. In its collaboration with Asosiasi Inventor Indonesia (AII), PO PFMA did valuation to the technology preparedness to get their reseach results commercialized. Until now, there would be 30 inventions that would be ready to get markets and some investors were interested in by delivering their formal commitment through ‘letter of intent’ and technology secrecy agreements.
In the evening event, the research results were delivered in the plenary session. It was divided into six interesting topics. Every participant could choose the session as what they were interested in, such as, bioenergy, environment, biomaterial, food, and health. Every topic also mentioned about the roles of palm oil in many aspects, such as, energy independency, emission mitigation, until creative economic development through biomaterial.
One interesting topic was about the roles of palm oil industries in energy independency support. As one bioenergy producer, palm oil massively plays its roles as the solution for energy needs in the sustainable future. In the session, many researchers and practitioners shared their opinions about how palm oil contributed bigger in the green energy transition.
Besides the seminars, PERISAI 2024 also provided room to show up the research results that PO PFMA funded. The participants were taken to directly see innovative products from palm oil, such as, bioenergy, food materials, and health sectors. Not only that, they interacted with many researchers, shared experiences, and discussed the potential to commerce the result. PO PFMA hoped by the discussion, commercialization would accelerate faster with the industrial supports.
In his speech, Eddy hoped that the forum could be the bridge that would connect research, industries, and policies. By having the strong synergy, palm oil industrie would keep developing, facing the global scale challenges, and remaining as one significant economic pillar nationally.
The event should not be only to share knowledge and science, but also as the real evidence that palm oil, as the strategic commodity, would have the brighter future. Moreover, by having the developing research and full supports from PO PFMA, palm oil from Indonesia would be ready to be more environmental and sustainable. (P2)
