WOOC 2008: Probing on gargantuan opportunities in world oils and oilseeds
The 2008 World Oils & Oilseeds Convention (WOOC), a three-day event, officially kicked off on September 9, 2008 at the Raffles City Convention Centre in Singapore, anchored by the theme ''Coming together to sow the seeds of success.''
This year's convention comes as a successful sequel to the Singapore International Oils & Oilseeds Conference (SIOOC 2007) held in 2007.
Omar Merican, chief operating officer of Bursa Malaysia, the world's largest Crude Palm Oil Futures Contract, welcomed participants, saying that the conference will seek to disprove claims on foreseen bleak future of commodity markets, highlight major oil players in the global scene and provide market developments and competitiveness updates.
Merican also underscored the unstoppable emergence of palm oil as the world's most traded oil at around 60 million tonnes yearly. The two iconic producers of palm oil today are Indonesia and Malaysia, with Asia being the biggest producer and consumer of palm oil, he added. Currently, at least four oilseeds conferences are happening around Asia - in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and India.
James Fry, chairman of LMC International, Oxford, also shared insights on the expanding use of biofuels. Fry looked on how a global 5-percent blend of biofuels in transport fuel by 2020 would affect the area of land in cultivation for the main food, feed and biofuel crops.
He said that ''if nationalism prevails and biofuel policy favours local crops (rapeseed oil and wheat in the EU or soy oil and corn in the US, for biodiesel and ethanol), with biofuel raw materials shared pro rata among all major food crops, it is quite conceivable that the world would have to find another 100 million hectares of arable land (an increase of around 15 percent) to meet its food and fuel demands.''
He pointed out that the solution that makes the least overall demand upon land use would be to concentrate upon crops with the highest biofuel yields/hectare, namely palm oil for biodiesel and sugarcane for ethanol.
Furthermore, he adds that the only way out of this dilemma is not to make biofuel use mandated, but to allow demand to be sensitive to price.
Other key topics discussed during the first day of the conference are the ''Changing market trends in the oils and fats sector'' and ''Certified sustainable edible oils and fats.''
On sustainability of edible oils and fats, speaker M R Chandran, advisor of Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) Board, said that responses from planters and farmers indicate that it is possible to meet the burgeoning oils and fats needs of a growing population but there should be considerable improvement on agricultural efficiency.
Furthermore, Chandran explained that inefficiencies and waste also need to be reduced in other parts of the agri-food chain. For instance, losses due to pre and post-harvest pests average around 35-50 percent in poor countries. A significant amount of currently cultivated land is producing far below the optimal level. This includes highly-populated developing countries, where land degradation, water stress, lack of infrastructure and extremely limited access to modern agricultural technologies and management techniques combine to keep farmers from improving their yields.
For the next remaining two days of the conference, equally prominent issues to be discussed include ''Price risk management and managing procurement and selling strategies during volatile times'' by Thomas Lee Bauer of Rabobank International, ''Vegetable oil complex - an analysis of the fundamentals'' by Dorab Mistry of Godrej International Limited, ''Rising costs of shipping Tropical Oils'' by Charles Barton of Drewry Shipping Consultant and ''Oil market outlook: Critical developments that will impact the oils and oilseeds industry'' by Jeffrey Brown of FACTS Global Energy (FGE) Singapore.
WOOC once again proved to be a highly informative conference while promoting international participants to network and build trade relationships.
