PHOTOS: Palm Oil Production At A Local Factory

Palm oil is a red oil extracted from the outer covering of the palm kernel fruit.

It has its origin in West Africa and has been produced and consumed in the region for centuries.

Palm oil is one of the most common products used by almost everybody in Nigeria. It is the most consumed edible oil worldwide, as it is a popular food ingredient in Africa and some parts of Asia (such as in Malaysia and Indonesia).

Apart from being a popular ingredient in African food (especially soups, stews and pottage), palm oil has one of the most versatile uses of any plant product. The global palm oil market is worth hundreds of millions of dollars every year. Palm oil is in greatest demand in West Africa, where it is used in almost every home for cooking and few other purposes. In the 1950s and 1960s, West Africa was the heartbeat of global palm oil production and the number one export commodity of many countries in the region but today, the region imports nearly 60 percent of its palm oil from faraway Malaysia and Indonesia to complement local production.
Before crude oil became Nigeria’s major export product, Oil Palm used to be one of the most popular export commodities.

The process from picking the fresh palm kernel to how it gets into stores is quite fascinating. The fresh palm kernel passes through different stages before it finally becomes the palm oil which is used for cooking. Until the early part of the 20th century, palm oil was processed only by traditional methods where loose fruits were collected from the ground or a few bunches were cut from the tree. From the 1920s however, experimentation began with steam cookers and hand presses designed to make production at the village level more efficient in terms of labor use and oil yield.
Virgin red palm oil is traditionally made by being hand-pressed, without the use of extreme heat or any chemicals. This allows it to maintain the natural nutrients of carotenes and the tocopherols and tocotrienols (Vitamin E).

In recent decades, the rapid increase in palm oil production has resulted in large factory settings, where the oil is refined. RBD (refined, bleached, deodorized) palm oil has the nutrients stripped, resulting in a different taste, colour and nutrition profile of the oil.
Two methods of fruit maceration common in traditional processing:

1. Pounding cooked/soaked fruits in large wooden or concrete mortars with a wooden pestle;

2. Foot trampling the cooked but cold fruits in canoes or specially constructed wooden troughs.

The traditional method of oil extraction consists of:

– steeping the pounded fruit mash in hot or cold water;

– removing fibre and nuts in small baskets and hand squeezing;

– filtering out residual fibre from the oil/water emulsion in perforated metal colanders or baskets;

– boiling and skimming palm oil from the oil/water mixture;

– drying the recovered oil.