Video & Slides 
Univanich Palm Oil enters South American market for seed exports
Univanich ‘s Staff packing Univanich seeds for first export to Colombia
Univanich Palm Oil PCL announced that it has completed Thailand’s first export of oil palm seeds to growers in Colombia. The consignment of 150,000 hybrid seeds was air freighted in January, with further orders received for shipment in February and March.
The Company’s Managing Director, John Clendon, commented that obtaining export orders from South America is a breakthrough for Univanich. He noted that Colombia is South America’s largest palm oil producing country and for Univanich to obtain seed orders in that competitive market is recognition that the Company’s breeding programme is producing world class material.
Loading the first consignment of oil palm seeds from Thailand to Colombia, airfreighted from Phuket on 29th January 2004
Univanich imported its first selected breeding palms back in 1972 and since then has imported pedigree oil palms from breeding programmes around the world. John Clendon noted that some of the company’s palm families can now be traced back several generations to selections made by Unilever in Congo and Cameroons more than 70 years ago. Univanich had acquired this valuable material through exchange with the international Plantations Group of Unilever PLC during the 1980s and 1990s, he said.
The Company’s head of Research and Development, Dr Palat Tittinutchanon, commented that since Univanich seed has been specially developed for the Company’s plantations in Southern Thailand, it has attracted interest from growers in Colombia and Brazil as well as Philippines, Cambodia and other countries which have a similar growing season to Southern Thailand. He reported that in 2003 the Company sold 1.9 million germinated seeds and 450,000 seedlings and is the leading domestic supplier of seeds and seedlings to Thailand’s rapidly growing oil palm industry.
