DekelOil Public Limited, operator and 51% owner of the vertically integrated Ayenouan palm oil project in Côte d’Ivoire, is holding its Annual General Meeting later today. At the meeting, Youval Rasin, CEO, will make the following statement:
“DekelOil continues to make fantastic progress on the ground especially at our new state-of-the-art extraction Mill which became operational in February 2014. Production for the first six months of 2015 was 21,836 tonnes of Crude Palm Oil (‘CPO’), an impressive 53% increase on the total production figure for the first nine months of operation.
“Since investing the capital in building our 60 tonne per hour Mill, which has a total capacity of 70,000 tonnes per annum making it one of the region’s largest, we have been focussing our efforts on upscaling our logistics system to increase the number of smallholders able to deliver their feedstock for processing promptly and efficiently. The recently published figures underpin the progress made already and with the scaling-up process continuing, a positive effect on our financials should materialise. Accordingly I look forward to reporting our interim results in the coming months, which should reflect the impact of our ramped up production.
“We are focused on increasing the profitability of Ayenouan in 2016 and beyond and we have a number of forthcoming initiatives to facilitate this. The first is to add to the existing smallholder feedstock currently being delivered to the Mill, with fresh fruit bunches (‘FFB’) delivered from company-owned estates, of which 1,900 hectares have been planted to date. Having recently begun to mature, these estates will deliver production at a higher margin. In line with this strategy, we also look forward to the addition of the kernel crushing plant, which will allow us to sell Palm Kernel Oil and animal feed to the local market at the factory gate when it becomes operational in Q4 2015.
“DekelOil’s vision is to become one of West Africa’s largest CPO producers. With this in mind, we will shortly be turning our attention to the 24,000 hectares located at our second project area at Guitry. Considering our achievements to date, and our proven ability to deliver on our objectives, I hope shareholders will agree that we are ideally poised to continue our growth trajectory. I look forward to updating the market regularly in the coming months and would like to thank shareholders for their support over the past year.”
