IOI Corp Bhd is investing US$100 million (RM326 million) to set up a margarine plant in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
"This plant is to value-add the oils and fats processed at our Rotterdam refinery. The demand for specialty fats is increasing," executive director Datuk Lee Yeow Chor told reporters after IOI Properties Bhd's shareholder meeting in Putrajaya yesterday.
Europe's largest palm oil refinery and fractionation plant in Rotterdam is operated by IOI Corp unit Loders Croklaan.
Last month, IOI Corp scrapped a plan to buy controlling stakes in six Sarawak plantation companies for RM439.9 million after a due diligence.
Yeow Chor declined to say if the group would revisit the deal.
IOI Corp executive chairman Tan Sri Lee Shin Cheng was also present at the meeting.
Shin Cheng said he was disappointed at the government's decision to slap a windfall tax on oil palm planters to continue subsidising cooking oil manufacturers.
The government had been collecting cooking oil cess from oil palm estate owners since June 1 last year. The subsidy will continue in the form of a windfall tax from July 1.
"Malaysia is the only country in the world where farmers subsidise manufacturers.
"We're already paying the RM15 per tonne cess to MPOB (Malaysian Palm Oil Board) and 7.5 per cent and 5 per cent sales taxes to Sabah and Sarawak state governments," Shin Cheng said.
"Palm oil, which is heavily taxed in our own country and in consuming countries, continues to trade at a discount to other vegetable oils that are being subsidised by governments in developed countries," he added.
From Business Times Online 10 June 2008
Picture: Carmen Soo
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