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ublicly listed food company PT Tiga Pilar Sejahtera Food (AISA) plans to further increase the company’s oil palm plantations in the coming years.

Tiga Pilar corporate secretary Yulianni Liyuwardi said on Friday the company would further increase its business in oil palm plantations in addition to its main rice farming and distribution businesses and food processing.

At present Tiga Pilar has 12,000 hectares of planted palm oil plantation located in East Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, West Kalimantan and Sumatra.

The company plans to expand oil palm plantations by another 8,000 hectares by the end of this year and by 45,000 hectares by 2015.

According to Yulianni, the company’s net revenues are expected to increase by 88 percent to Rp 3.1 trillion (US$331.7 million) this year.

About Rp 1.4 trillion of that total is expected to come from the rice business, Rp 1.5 trillion from food production and Rp 200 billion from crude palm oil (CPO) production.

Tiga Pilar reported net sales of Rp 577 billion in the first quarter of the year, increasing by 58.06 percent from Rp 365 billion in the same period last year.

The company’s rice division contributed the most, reaching 53.85 percent of total revenue.

In a bid to further strengthen its rice business, Tiga Pilar agreed on Friday to cooperate with PT Pertani in renting rice warehouses with a capacity of 50,000 tons during harvest time.

PT Pertani head of warehouse division Ade Taufik said that Tiga Pilar will rent warehouses in Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi with a rent price of Rp 75 per kilogram of unhulled rice and Rp 100/kg of milled rice for a tenancy of three months.

“Each of the warehouses has a capacity of 1,000 to 1,400 tons, and for each month of rent extension we will charge Rp 15 per kilograms,” said Ade.

“However, this is an indicative price, as the negotiation process is still ongoing,” he added.

Tiga Pilar marketing director Jo Tjong Seng said that at the first stage the company would only rent the warehouses that were located in West Java, totaling 35,000 tons of capacity.

“Through this cooperation we can market our products on a larger scale because Pertani has rice warehouses spread all over Indonesia,” said Jo.

Last May, Tiga Pilar mentioned that the company was planning to construct two new rice mills in Sragen, Central Java in the second quarter of next year, which will each have a production capacity of 120,000 tons a year.

Jo said that the cooperation with Pertani would serve to support their plan to increase production capacity. (nad)