Harvest and Logistics Optimisation – Oil Palm
Our computational modelling has been used to improve the efficiency of the palm oil harvest – directing collection trucks to ensure that as much ripe fruit is extracted, as freshly as possible
Challenge
Oil palm is grown on large plantations of hundreds or even thousands of hectares in size, fruits constantly, and must be harvested by hand within a week’s window of optimum ripeness. Once harvested, the fruits must be delivered to a mill to be pressed and palm oil extracted, before they degrade – within 24 hours. The size of the plantations, time-limited nature of harvest and processing, and scattered geography of the mills means this is a system ripe for modelling and optimisation, to improve upon current rules of thumb.
Solution
Sensonomic have developed a computational simulation of palm oil production, collection, and processing. In the simulation, users test different options and find routes which collect the most oil palm fruits over the shortest journey, and ensure a steady supply to mills.
We are very aware of the environmental impacts of palm oil plantations, and their increasing pressure on forests. Therefore, not only are we looking to increase the yield from existing plantations (whereby relieving the pressure to expand plantations into primary forest), but also to enable environmental risk monitoring to de-incentivise deforestation.
We have built capabilities into the simulation to rate palm oil plantations by their risk of expanding and causing deforestation. The simulation allows aggregators to test how avoiding high-risk plantations affects profits from palm oil, and also to preferentially route trucks to lower-risk plantations. Aggregators can use the simulation to find their optimal risk tolerance balancing profits and forest loss.
Results
Through this project we showed how improving harvest and logistics practices following our optimisation tool would lead to a 12.5 % increase in revenue on any given plantation.
To access a demo of this tool, and discuss your needs, please get in touch.
