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T Triputra Agro Persada (TAP), a subsidiary of Triputra Group owned by former Astra International president director Teddy P. Rachmat, is working on a massive expansion of the company'€™s oil palm plantations.

The company'€™s chief financial officer Erida Djuhandi said that Triputra would expand its plantations by 15,000 hectares '€” over 13,000 American football fields '€” a year for the next four years in order to turn it into a major crude palm oil (CPO) producer.

The expansion would add the current planted area of 145,000 hectares on its 300,000 hectares land bank across Sumatra and Kalimantan, Erida said.

Earlier this month TAP secured a syndicated loan worth US$470 million from 14 foreign and local banks to partly finance the expansion. '€œAbout $270 million would be used for plantations, like land clearing, infrastructure, seeds, electricity and staff housing,'€ she said. TAP would use the other $200 million to refinance the company'€™s loan, she added.

The loan syndication was lead by DBS and HSBC, with members including ANZ, CIMB-Niaga, DKI, ICBC, Indonesia Eximbank, OCBC, OCBC-NISP, Permata, QNB Kesawan, Rabobank, Standard Chartered and UOB. The loan, to be disbursed in half rupiah and half American dollars, would mature in nine years, said Erida. She refused to reveal the loan
interest rate.

TAP, which is chaired by Teddy'€™s son Arif P. Rachmat, has run palm plantation since 2005. It has 31
subsidiaries.

According to Erida, only 35 percent of the palm in the plantation area was in mature condition as it '€œneeds investment for three or four year before [the company] can harvest [the fruits]'€.

According to the company'€™s annual report in 2012, the company recorded Rp 23,706 billion in net income, rising sharply from Rp 13,375 billion in the previous year. The company produced 1.02 million tons of palm fruit bunches (TBS) and 280,958 tons CPO last year, which were sold on the domestic market.

Besides the syndicated loan, TAP also invited strategic partners to jointly finance the expansion.

'€œWe invited GSC and Northstar Equity Partners as strategic partners last year. They injected capital of $200 million as minority shareholders,'€ Erida said.

TAP plans to sell its shares to the public in the next three to five years, following in the steps of two of Triputra'€™s subsidiaries, plantation company PT Dharma Satya Nusantara (DSNG) and car rental company PT Adi Sarana Armada (ASSA).

The parent company of TAP, PT Triputra Investindo Arya (Triputra Group), has diversified business activities ranging from crumb rubber processor, manufacturing, mining, trading to services.