Business

Friday April 4, 2008

Boustead eyes Islamic banking ops in China



KUALA LUMPUR: Boustead Holdings Bhd plans to establish an Islamic banking operations in China via a joint venture with its foreign partner the Bank of East Asia (BEA).

It was now “exploring that opportunity with BEA,” group managing director Tan Sri Lodin Wok Kamaruddin said, adding that the proposal was subject to approvals from the authorities concerned.

He said the potential for Islamic banking operations in China was “quite great” as there were some 100 million Muslims in the north-western region of the republic alone.

Speaking after the company AGM yesterday, Lodin said the group’s plantation division delivered substantial profits last year as a result of steady crude palm oil (CPO) prices and he was confident CPO prices would remain bullish on the back of strong demand from India and China.

From left: Tan Sri Lodin Wok Kamaruddin, chairman Gen. ( R ) Tan Sri Dato' Mohd Ghazali Che Mat and director, manufacturing & corporate planning Koo Hock Fee

“We believe CPO prices would continue to be around RM3,000 to RM3,500 (per tonne) for a while,” he said.

Lodin also said Boustead had implemented various yield improvement programmes to increase its yield from 20 tonnes per hectares to about 25 tonnes per hectare.

“We are also looking at introducing various processes to further improve the yield of the plants.

“Through Applied Agricultural Resources Sdn Bhd our research plantation house, we are developing tissue culture planting materials to help improve our yield,” he said.

Instead of expanding its current land bank, he said the group would move towards high density planting.

“Presently, we have about 140 plants per hectare. Through research and new planting material using the tissue culture method, we hope to increase it to 170-180 plants per hectare,” he said.

However, the plan was still in the research stage, Lodin said.

He said the company had invested about RM8mil-9mil in its production laboratory, which is one of the largest tissue culture laboratories in the world.


BHIC : [Stock Watch] [News]

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