Malaysian oil palm industry on the hunt for harvesting tools that boost worker output

Kuala Lumpur

POUND for pound, palm oil has a huge edge over alternatives squeezed out of canola, soya beans or sunflowers.

It is more versatile - found in everything from chocolates to cosmetics - and far more productive. The fleshy fruit yields five times more oil per acre than canola and has eight times the yield of soya beans.

The problem for growers such as Felda Global Ventures Holdings Bhd is that the tropical tree fruit that yields the oil is harvested mostly by hand and in dangerous conditions that lead to a lot of waste. In Malaysia, the world's second largest producer, about US$1.2 billion of oil …