Chew, B.C. and Hamid, S.R. 2012. Social Shaping of Malaysian National Biomass Agenda: Building the Value Added Products from an Abundance of Oil Palm Biomass. In International Conference on Biomass for Biofuels and Value-Added Products (ICBBVAP) 2012. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 23-24 October 2012. Full paper http://www.academia.edu/2028507/Social_Shaping_of_Malaysian_National_Biomass_Agenda_Building_the_Value_Added_Products_from_an_Abundance_of_Oil_Palm_Biomass

1. Social Shaping of
Malaysian National Biomass Agenda:
Building the Value Added Products
from an Abundance of Oil Palm Biomass
Boon Cheong Chew and Syaiful Rizal Hamid
bcchew@utem.edu.my syaiful@utem.edu.my
Faculty of Technology Management and Technopreneurship
University of Technical Malaysia Melaka
Hang Tuah Jaya
76100 Durain Tunggal
Melaka

3. Introduction
The NBS (2011) is to determine how Malaysia can
develop new biomass sectors with the aim of
gaining more revenue from oil palm industry
through the utilisation of the associated biomass, in
order to create higher value-added economic
activities (downstream) that contribute towards:
(a) Malaysia’s gross national income
(b) High value jobs

4. Our National Comparative Advantage
1. Malaysia’s oil palm plantations with the total
acreage has grown to 4.85 million hectares in
2010 (NBS, 2011).
2. Malaysia is the world’s second largest producer
and the world’s largest exporter of crude palm oil
(NBS, 2011).

5. Our National Comparative Advantage
3. Malaysia’s oil palm industry is the 4th largest
contributor to the nation’s, RM50billion of GNI
(MPOB, 2011).
4. It is estimated that Malaysia could benefit
from an additional RM30billion contribution to
the GNI by utilising the oil palm biomass, which
identified as part of the National Key Economic
Area.

6. Figure 1: Upstream and downstream of oil palm industry

7. Upstream
-The upstream activities have become hierarchically
segmented.
-Mainly producing palm oil for food, medicine and consumer
products.
-This marks out a degree of autonomy between the
development of these different components of the oil palm
production system at these upstream activities, whereby
interaction between each set of components is encouraged
and sustained until today.

8. Downstream:
-currently attracting research.
-new technologies are under research because they are
perceived importance for our national strategies.
-the importance of innofusion would focus upon a nexus
between diverse players: not only those involved in oil palm
supply, but also various organisations (public sectors,
research laboratories, IoHL, associated private sectors,
potential users etc all are “sateliting” on the oil palm
industry downstream, to create value added products from
oil palm biomass.

9. Abundance of Oil Palm Biomass
-An increase in planted area for oil palm was the
main driver of biomass volume growth.
-The forecasted growth will be influenced by a
combination of plantation expansion and oil palm
fresh fruit bunch yield improvement, resulted from
an effective plantation management, crop
materials’ scientific innovation and efficient
replanting of mature plantations.

10. Five Types of Oil Palm Biomass
(a) oil palm fronds
-Available throughout the year in the plantations as they are regularly
cut during harvesting of fresh fruit bunches and pruning of the palm
trees.
(b) trunks
- Available in the plantations (at the end of plantation lifecycle)
(c) empty fruit bunches
-remain after the removal of the palm fruits from the fruit bunches.
(d) palm kernel
(e) shells and mesocarp fibre. The NBS (2011)
*palm kernel, mesocarp fibre and shells are remained after the
extraction of crude palm oil at mills.

11. The Quantity of Biomass
Hence, most of the solid biomass is found in the
plantations (as fronds and trunks) account for
75% of the biomass volume, while the remaining
25% is generated in the mills during the
extraction of palm oil. (NBS, 2011).

12. The Reality Checking
-The pace of innovation in oil palm downstream
activities is coupled with the need to maintain inter-
operability between the offerings of different
players.
-The huge R&D costs of new products are coupled
with massive potential economies of scale that oil
palm biomass will bring.

13. The Reality Checking…
-The downstream opportunities has to be
efficiency managed to ensure sustainability
growth in this sector.
-Pellet..can we put higher value on the biomass,
besides Pellet?

14. Our Technologies at Downstream
-The most up-to-date engineering research on value-
added biomass products, where some of the works
have attended to flows of technological information
between technologists and industry players in the
innovation process, highlighting the importance of
collaborative networks (joint/collaborative R&D).
-The R&D is ongoing to search for technological
efficiency driven techniques, in order to boost the
quality of value-added biomass and to attain speed of
delivery.

15. Our Technology at Downstream…
-We understand that, different biomass products have
different risk-return profiles which are largely determined by
our capacity of the production technologies and global
demand.
-Different conversion technologies need to be tested, then
pilot plants and leading up to commercial scale plant
establishment. This could be done through various channels
technology transfer advocated by Khalil (2000)
*International technology transfer, regional technology transfer, cross-industry/cross
sector technology transfer, interfirm technology transfer, intrafirm technology transfer.

16. Conclusion
-Research into the implementation of value added on palm
oil downstream biomass has uncovered a wide range of
social factors shaping the design of these technologies.
-These factors include the socioeconomic and political
objectives of the policy makers, industry players; as well as
the immediate features of the process, while in the broader
context, including the industrial relations system and
national culture (vision and mission), global agenda (green
and sustainable) have all been shown to be significant.

17. Recommendation
•Historically, the technological change in the industry
involves a typically painful learning process that has, to
date, been repeated for each new technical offering as it
emerges (Senker 1987).
•This is because policy makers, industry players and other
institutions have consistently underestimated the
difficulty of implementing these new technologies, and
the need to invest in developing these technologies with
training required and subsequent supporting institutions
needed.

18. Recommendation
•Hence, to achieve full potential of oil palm biomass will require
significant coordination and cooperation among stakeholders. In order
to materialise this opportunity, the Malaysian Government must ensure
that the right regulatory framework and incentive package are
instituted. This will be achieved through:
(a) supporting the formation of cooperatives among plantation owners
by adopting new policies which could reduce the risks of business
partnering.
(b) establish the new entry point projects and the expansion of the
scope of a few existing projects under the palm oil NKEA.
(c ) to fund the related R&D projects of biofuels and biobased chemicals.
This could catalyse both the public and private sectors investments.

19. Recommendation
•Consequently, the institution created along the value chain
will playing their respective functions in transforming the
landscape of the palm oil biomass industry, to simulate
innovative activities in economies on a national scale.
•The linkages among all related institutions help in
transmitting information flow and allocate both roles and
responsibilities that ought to be played.
•The next stage is to determine the learning innovation and to
the extend which R&D and future production strategies could
be integrated and materialised along the innofusion process.

20. Source
• Please acknowledge the authors:
Chew, B.C. and Hamid, S.R. 2012. Social
Shaping of Malaysian National Biomass Agenda:
Building the Value Added Products from an
Abundance of Oil Palm Biomass. In International
Conference on Biomass for Biofuels and Value-
Added Products (ICBBVAP) 2012. Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia 23-24 October 2012.

21. Contact
1. Boon Cheong Chew
Google BCChew for LinkedIn and some of his work
email: bcchew@email.com
My primary research interest:
(a) Renewable energy development and deployment.
(b) Clean technologies innovation and implementation.
2. Syaiful Rizal Hamid
Syaiful@utem.edu.my
Syaiful’s primary research interest:
(a) Quality Management and Technology Management
(b) Design Manufacturing