Alvin Lau opens palm oil nursery in Miri Bintulu coastal road

Planting the seeds of success

Posted on November 28, 2012, Wednesday

PROPER CARE: Lau standing in front of rows of young oil palm trees at the Miri Best One nursery.Lau reveals that the seedlings take about one year to reach full maturity before it can be planted in the estates.

MIRI: Despite being a newcomer in the oil palm nursery business, Miri Best One Sdn Bhd (Miri Best One) strives to produce the best oil palm seedlings in the industry.

Established in 2008 as Kai Nguong Nursery’s outward venture to tap into the growing and highly-in-demand oil palm seedling business, Miri Best One’s agricultural practice hopes to put quality first in all stages of growth.

With a land area of 20 acres, the nursery is planted with around 210,000 young oil palm trees (or often called as oil palm seedlings), of which 180,000 are comprised of the DxP Felda Yangambi hybrid and the rest are the Calix 600 – a new super hybrid from Sime Darby Seeds and Agricultural Services.

The nursery is located some 30km from Miri, off the Miri-Bintulu coastal road.

Its managing director Alvin Lau said the process of oil palm cultivation is a difficult one, where a lot of care is involved.

“The seedlings must receive enough water, fertilizer, right soil and sunshine,” he added. “These young trees need to be watered as least twice a day as they use a lot of water,” he pointed out.

Lau revealed that the seedlings take about one year to reach full maturity before it can be planted in the estates.

“A seedling that has not grown well in the nursery will produce oil palm tree. Therefore, we eliminate the poor ones from the good ones – where this process is called culling – and out of the total seedlings, about 80 percent are deemed good,” Lau explained.

Apart from pests and diseases, the seedlings also suffer from abnormal growth.

“A good characteristic of good germinated palm oil seedlings is that they will be able to grow into healthy trees, bearing much fruits,” Lau explained.

Every month, the nursery produces about 10,000 young oil palm trees ready to be planted in the estates, he said.However, many of Lau’s customers also come from smallholders who sometimes even purchase up to a few hundred young trees.

“We also have orders of up to thousands of tress from the big plantation companies,” he revealed, adding that each young tree is being sold at RM13.

As an assurance of quality, the nursery has also obtained the Oil Palm Nursery Certificate of Competency meeting MPOB’s stringent requirements of high standards in infrastructure, facilities and nursery practices.

In a nutshell, Miri Best One believes in providing the best seedlings for its customers to ensure they have bountiful harvest and big returns for their investment.