Video & Slides 
Univanich Palm Oil PCL donated Baht 1,000,000 to the emergency Tsunami relief fund in Krabi Province.
On 29th December 2004
In the first announcement of annual results since Univanich was listed on the SET in November 2003, Chairman, Mr Apirag Vanich, noted that strong growth in Thailand’s oil palm industry has assisted the Company in achieving several new growth milestones. “Thailand’s production of palm fruit increased to 4.8 million tonnes in 2003 with most of the growth in the small farmer sector.This enabled Univanich to also increase its production since the Company purchased 76% of its fruit from outside growers ” said Mr Vanich. “Due to this increasing production from our fruit suppliers Univanich factories reached the significant milestone of more than 500,000 tonnes fruit processed in one year, an increase of 18.6% over the prevous year. This is the maximum of the Company’s present capacity and a new factory is already under construction for opening in the 4th quarter of 2004” he said.
Mr Apirag Vanich noted that Thailand has now moved up into thirdplace amongst the World’s producers of palm oil, behind the giant producers of Malaysia and Indonesia. In 2003 Thailand produced more than 860,000 tonnes of Crude Palm Oil, of which 86,000 tonnes, or 10% of production was exported. “When our first oil palms were planted back in 1969 it was intended to supply just the local market for cooking oil” said Mr Vanich, “But we have now developed into a competitive export industry. In 2003 Univanich exported about half its palm oil production, or more than 50,000 tonnes, to new customers in India and in Malaysia” he said.
“We expect this exporting will continue since Thailand’s palm oil production easily exceeds local consumption. Furthermore, there is still strong interest from farmers to plant oil palms. In 2003 Univanich’s oil palm breeding programme supplied 1.6 million hybrid seeds and seedlings to local growers. This high yielding material was enough to plant another 60,000 rai which will come into production in 2 or 3 years time. We estimate that Univanich supplies about one third of the local market for high quality seeds so this indicates to us Thailand’s oil palm industry is still expanding at a rapid rate” said Mr Vanich.
World consumption of palm oil is about 28 million tonnes per year and demand is increasing due to population growth and higher vegetable oil consumption in developing economies like India and China. This growing demand has helped to keep prices firm especially during 2003 – 2004 as world stocks are low. “We expect Thailand’s farmers to receive good prices for their palm fruit again this year and this will encourage a further expansion of oil palm plantings” said Mr Vanich.
Univanich Palm Oil PCL (UVAN) announced 2003 sales of Baht 1,955 million, an increase of 23% over the previous year. The Company’s net profit increased by 80% to reach Baht 400.2 million or earnings of Baht 4.76 per share.
