Palm oil yields improve in H1

Palm oil yields improve in H1

JAKARTA: PT Astra Agro Lestari, Indonesia's biggest publicly traded agriculture company, said yields from its oil palms rose in the first half of this year.

Palm-oil yields rose to 23.3 percent in the six months ended June 30, from 22.7 percent a year earlier, the Jakarta-based company said on Monday in a faxed statement.

The company said on Friday profit fell 19 percent during the period as the higher yields failed to offset a decline in prices for palm oil. Astra Agro, a unit of PT Astra International, said first-half profit fell to Rp 385.5 billion (US$39.3 million), or Rp 244.8 a share, on sales of Rp 1.58 trillion.

The company received Rp 3,275 a kilogram of palm oil, an edible vegetable oil, compared with Rp 4,024 in the same period a year earlier.

Astra Agro's crude palm oil sales by volume rose 13 percent to 388,529 tons in the first half, the company said.

Palm oil averaged 1,388.50 ringgit in the six months ended June 30 on the Kuala Lumpur Commodities Exchange, 22 percent lower than the same period last year, according to Bloomberg data.-- Bloomberg