The Future of Palm Oil and Kernel Industry
Although the palm kernel industry has not attained important dimensions in the Cameroons, there is no reason why it should not form one of the staple products of the colony, or why the whole of the trade in palm kernels should not be transferred from Germany to this country. Hitherto the quarter of a million tons of palm kernels—valued at over £4,000,000—exported annually from British West Africa has gone to Germany, where crushing-mills and manufacturing plants have been established, while considerable quantities of high-priced kernel oil, in manufactured or unmanufactured form, have been exported from Germany to Great Britain. About 50 per cent. of the produce of the crushed palm kernels is marketed in the form of oil, and the balance is made up into palm kernel cake, practically the whole of which is consumed in Germany, where it commands a good price and is in great demand, especially among dairy farmers.
This profitable German industry has now been suspended owing to the war, which has rendered it necessary for planters to find a new market for their produce, and the opportunity seems propitious for an endeavour to establish it in Great Britain upon a substantial scale. With a view to arousing interest in the subject in commercial and agricultural circles, Sir Owen Phillipps, K.C.M.G., Chairman of the West African section of the London Chamber of Commerce, has issued a timely pamphlet in which the present position of the trade is described and its potentialities are indicated. The Anglicisation of the industry, in addition to promoting Imperial commercial intercourse, and securing increased industrial employment in the United Kingdom, would furnish British farmers—who are complaining of the enhanced prices of present foods—with a new supply of a relatively cheap and excellent feeding material.
The profitable exploitation of this crushing industry depends upon the capacity of the British market to absorb a larger supply of palm kernel oil and upon the possibility of inducing British farmers to adopt the use of palm kernel cake. There are at present two mills, both at Liverpool, for dealing with palm kernels, capable together of crushing annually about 70,000 tons, leaving a balance unprovided for of at least 180,000 tons. To cope with this additional quantity several of the great milling companies of Liverpool, London, Hull, &c., have already made and are making alterations in their machinery in order to crush palm kernels, so that in the near future much greater quantities will be dealt with. A new mill on the Thames, at Erith, is also being erected, which, when completed after the war, will be capable of crushing a very large quantity.