About palm oil
What is palm oil
Palm oil has become an indispensable part of our everyday lives: according to estimates by the WWF, around 50% of all products in supermarkets contain palm oil – from detergent and lipstick to ice cream and processed meat products. A large share of globally produced palm oil is also used as biofuel or animal feed.
The oil palm (Elaeis guineensis), originally native to West Africa, is now cultivated in almost all tropical regions of the world. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (2023), around 78 million tonnes of palm oil were produced worldwide in 2022. The main cultivation areas are Indonesia and Malaysia, which produce around 65 million tonnes of palm oil—about 83% of the world’s total. In Indonesia alone, oil palms grow on almost 14 million hectares—an area more than three times the size of Switzerland (IndexMundi, 2023). However, cultivation is also increasingly expanding in South America and Africa. With 57% and 32% respectively, Indonesia and Malaysia are also the leading exporting countries worldwide. After India (19%), followed by China (15%), the European Union is the world’s third-largest import market for palm oil, with 10% and 4.8 million tonnes (IndexMundi 2023). In 2021/22, the most palm oil was consumed by Indonesia (18.9 million tonnes), India (8.35 million tonnes), China (5.05 million tonnes) and the EU (5.75 million tonnes). Globally, 65% of palm oil is used in the food sector and 31% in industry. This includes, among other things, biodiesel and cosmetics.
Fruit
The oil palm fruit resembles an olive: it has a hard stone and fleshy, creamy pulp. Its high beta-carotene content gives the palm fruit its reddish colour. This colour is removed during refining. With 45 to 60% total fat, the palm fruit has a high fat content. Valuable oils are obtained both from the pulp and from the kernel of the oil palm fruit: palm oil from the pulp and solid palm kernel oil from the kernels. However, the fruits and kernels are processed separately.
Palm oil
Palm oil is the world’s most widely used vegetable oil. It is extracted from the yellowish to orange-coloured pulp. Shortly before harvest, the oil content of the fruit is at its highest—between 45 and 50%. After harvesting, the ripe fruits are sterilised to deactivate enzymes and then pressed. This produces crude palm oil (CPO). Palm oil is neutral in taste and heat-stable, making it well suited for frying, baking and deep-frying. Traditionally, this is done, among other places, in Indonesia or West African countries. Due to its high energy content, it is also suitable as a fuel. Palm oil is also used to manufacture candles, cosmetic products and detergents. Because of these unique natural properties, palm oil can hardly be replaced by other raw materials.
Palm kernel oil
Although they are obtained from the same fruit, palm oil and palm kernel oil have very different compositions. To produce palm kernel oil, the kernels are dried, sometimes ground, and then pressed. Like coconut oil, palm kernel oil belongs to the lauric oils and therefore contains up to 80% of the saturated fatty acid lauric acid in bound form. At room temperature, palm kernel fat is solid and does not need to be chemically hydrogenated. This makes it particularly spreadable. Due to its consistency, palm kernel oil is used primarily in the confectionery industry. Its properties as a carrier for flavours and vitamins—substances that cannot be incorporated into foods without palm kernel oil—are highly valued. It is also in strong demand from the cosmetics and detergent industries because of its special properties, which among other vegetable oils are found only in coconut oil. Washing-active substances derived from palm kernel oil are used as so-called surfactants in shampoos, laundry detergents or cleaning products. Worldwide, around 8.7 million tonnes of palm kernel oil were produced in 2019. About 8% of globally traded palm kernel oil ends up in Germany. In 2021/22, around 20.1 million tonnes of palm kernel oil were processed worldwide.
Derivatives
Palm oil or palm kernel oil can be modified through complex chemical conversion processes. This produces so-called derivatives, which are used, for example, as surfactants or emulsifiers in cosmetics and cleaning products. Emulsifiers make it possible to mix two liquids that do not normally mix, such as oil and water. Surfactants are washing-active substances. Derivatives from palm oil and palm kernel oil are standard ingredients on the market, for which there are currently hardly any viable alternatives with comparable properties.
Plant
The oil palm, which can grow up to 30 metres tall, is a versatile plant. Around 3 to 5 years after planting, the palm becomes commercially usable. From the third year of life, fruits form in the leaf axils of the palm; they look like bunches and consist of many individual fruits. After around four to six years, yields stabilise; only from the 21st year does production slowly decline. The old palms are then replaced with new ones. An adult oil palm produces fruit bunches of more than 20 kg about 15 times a year, growing in large and dense clusters. The oil palm is robust and not very susceptible to pests. Demand for palm oil is high. This can be attributed, among other things, to the steadily growing population and its increasing demand for processed foods.
Yield
It is also particularly popular because, with an average of 3.25 tonnes per hectare (t/ha), the oil palm has by far the highest yield of all oil crops. Of all oil-bearing crops, the oil palm accounts for the smallest share—around 9%—of the total cultivation area used worldwide for oil and fat production. At the same time, it makes up the largest share of total production at around 40%. Sunflower, coconut or soy—their area yield is on average three times lower than that of palm oil.
Palm oil in Germany
Our latest analysis of the palm oil sector in Germany for 2019 found that of the 1.26 million tonnes of palm oil consumed in Germany, more than 1 million tonnes were certified. The largest share—726,397 tonnes of palm oil consumption—was used for energy generation, primarily in the transport sector. Since January 2023, blending palm oil in Germany has no longer been counted towards the greenhouse gas reduction quota. As a result, the raw material is hardly used anymore for biodiesel production. Across the EU, the use of palm oil in the fuel sector will be phased out by 2030 at the latest.