NBPOL to mark golden jubilee

The National Business

NEW Britain Palm Oil Ltd – the country’s largest agriculture business – will celebrate its golden jubilee this year, according to country manager Robert Nilkare.
The 50th anniversary celebrations will commemorate its achievements and successes and recognise its partners, employees and stakeholders for 50 years of consistent and sustainable development.
Celebrations will take place at the company sites around the world, including in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and the United Kingdom.
“During the Papua New Guinea Independence celebrations, we will host two major celebrations – one at Mosa in West New Britain where it all began on May 19, 1967, and the other in Port Moresby in August to launch the NBPOL 50th anniversary book,” Nilkare, pictured, said.
“The celebrations will be progressive over the next 12 months.”
He said as part of the anniversary celebrations, New Britain Palm Oil Limited would brand its products such as Ramu Sugar with the anniversary logo.
“We have started on the collation of historical photographs and commentaries for the anniversary book. The illustrated historical book will cover 50 years of NBPOL,” he said.
“The book would feature West New Britain operations, Ramu-Agri Industries, Higaturu Oil Palms, Milne Bay Estates, Poliamba, Guadalcanal Plains Palm Oil Ltd in the Solomon Islands and New Britain Oil Ltd in the UK.”
Some of its outstanding achievements include:

  • NBPOL selling 95 per cent of its outputs to European Union customers;
  • being a founding member of the Palm Oil Innovation Group (POIG) 3) and instrumental in the creation of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil; and,
  • Being the first palm oil company to include all of its smallholders in the RSPO certification process.

New Britain Palm Oil Limited is a fully vertically integrated industry through its parent company and Malaysian conglomerate, Sime Darby Plantation.
It has invested in its people and land for development of palm oil, cane sugar and beef cattle. Its total land development is around 136,268ha.
This investment supports about 25,000 employees, which represents the source of livelihoods for 112,500 family members.
NBPOL is a large scale integrated, industrial producer of sustainable palm oil in Australasia. It has over 83,000 hectares of planted oil palm plantations, a further 10,000 hectares under preparation for oil palm and over 5,600 hectares of sugar cane.