Dekel Agri-Vision Plc (LON:DKL), the West African agriculture company focused on building a portfolio of sustainable and diversified projects, has provided a January 2024 monthly production update for its Ayenouan palm oil project in Côte d’Ivoire.
Key Highlights
· The Palm Oil Operation has started the 2024 year well recording an increase in Crude Palm Oil (‘CPO’) production of 56.2% compared to January last year.
· Like for like January 2024 CPO sales volumes were also 38% higher than last year due to the strong monthly CPO production.
· CPO sales prices in January softened from last month to €737 per tonne but we expect to see an uptick in CPO prices again in February. Local CPO prices remain below international CPO prices as efforts continue locally to manage food prices, however, our FFB purchase prices are also lower resulting in continued healthy gross margins being achieved.
· The CPO extraction rate of 21% was typical for the month of January but 8.7% lower than the unusually high extraction rate achieved in January 2023.
· The product orders for the additional Cashew equipment have been made and we are working towards our objective of increasing our production in phases from Q2 2024.
| Jan-24 | Jan-23 | Change | |
| FFB processed (tonnes) | 13,508 | 7,892 | 71.2% |
| CPO Extraction Rate | 21.0% | 23.0% | -8.7% |
| CPO production (tonnes) | 2,839 | 1,818 | 56.2% |
| CPO Sales (tonnes) | 2,336 | 1,693 | 38.0% |
| Average CPO price per tonne | €737 | €1,089 | -32.3% |
| Palm Kernel Oil (‘PKO’) production (tonnes) | 173 | 82 | 111.0% |
| PKO Sales (tonnes) | Nil | 30 | n/a |
| Average PKO price per tonne | n/a | €1,143 | n/a |
Lincoln Moore, Dekel‘s Executive Director, said: “The Palm Oil Operation has started 2024 very well continuing the excellent performance achieved in 2023. We will shortly be entering the production high season and we are operationally well positioned to take advantage of the anticipated spike in production levels over the coming months.”
