Palm Oil (Aceh) (Dutch: palmolie) was the edible and industrial vegetable oil extracted from the fleshy fruit of the African oil palm (Elaeis guineensis, Dutch: oliewinpalm) cultivated on European-managed estates in the residency of Atjeh in the early twentieth century, and was one of the principal plantation export commodities of the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden in the inter-war period. The palm oil was processed on-site in palm-oil factories (Dutch: palmolie-fabrieken), stored in large reservoirs (Dutch: reservoirs) at the export harbour of Belawan, and then pumped directly into the ship tanks (Dutch: scheepstanks) of the ocean-going tankers that carried it to Europe. The palm kernels (Dutch: palmpitten) were exported separately, principally to Denmark for further crushing, while the residual press-cake served as animal feed (Dutch: veevoeder).
The oil palm and its introduction to Atjeh
The African oil palm, Elaeis guineensis, was introduced to the Netherlands Indies in the mid-nineteenth century as an ornamental and experimental crop, and was first planted commercially in the East Coast of Sumatra residency in the 1910s. The climate and soils of the east-coast alluvial plain — shared by the Atjeh Tamiang lowlands and the neighbouring Sumatran East Coast — proved ideal for the palm, and the Agrarische Wet 1870 framework of long-lease erfpacht concessions allowed European companies to assemble the large contiguous blocks of land that the crop required. By the 1920s palm-oil estates had spread from the Sumatran East Coast into the southeastern corner of Atjeh, around Langsa and the Tamiang river delta.
The palm begins to bear commercial quantities of fruit at three to four years of age, reaches full production at eight to ten years, and continues to yield for twenty-five years or more. The fruit is borne in large, tightly packed, reddish-orange bunches (Dutch: trossen) weighing 15 to 25 kilograms each, which must be harvested at the peak of ripeness and processed within 24 hours to prevent the build-up of free fatty acids (Dutch: vrije vetzuren) that would render the oil inedible.
Processing chain
The processing chain of Atjeh palm oil integrated estate, factory and port in a tightly managed industrial sequence:
- Fruit harvesting: the fruit bunches were cut from the palms by native tappers using long-handled sickles (Dutch: lansen) and conveyed by light railway or lorry to the estate factory within hours of harvest.
- Sterilisation: the bunches were loaded into large cylindrical sterilisers (Dutch: sterilisatoren) and steamed under pressure for about an hour to loosen the fruit from the bunch stem and to inactivate the lipase enzymes responsible for free-fatty-acid formation.
- Threshing and digestion: the sterilised bunches were fed into a rotating threshing drum (Dutch: dorstmachine) that separated the individual fruits from the stem; the fruits then passed into a digester (Dutch: stamper) that crushed and heated them into a homogeneous mash.
- Oil pressing: the mash was pressed in continuous screw-presses (Dutch: schroefpersen) to extract the crude red palm oil (Dutch: ruwe palmolie), which was then clarified in settling tanks (Dutch: klaringsbakken) and pumped to the storage reservoirs.
- Kernel recovery: the pressed cake was broken up, the palm kernels (Dutch: palmpitten) separated by winnowing, and the kernels bagged for export — principally to Denmark and the Netherlands — where they were crushed to produce palm-kernel oil (Dutch: palmkernolie) for soap and margarine.
- Residue: the residual cake (Dutch: perskoek) served as animal feed (Dutch: veevoeder) and was sold locally or shipped to European compound-feed manufacturers.
The crude palm oil was held in large heated reservoirs at Belawan — kept at approximately 60 degrees Celsius to remain liquid — and pumped through insulated pipelines directly into the ship tanks (Dutch: scheepstanks) of the ocean-going tankers that carried it to the margarine, soap and tin-plate factories of Europe.
Uses and economic significance
Palm oil was utilised in soap, tin-plate manufacture, and margarine production. The European margarine industry — pioneered by Lever Brothers and the Nederlandsche Margarine Unie in the 1920s — was the single largest customer for Atjeh palm oil, and the rapid expansion of margarine consumption in the European working-class diet was the principal driver of the inter-war boom in Atjeh palm-oil estates. The colonial tin industry of Bangka and Billiton also consumed substantial quantities of palm oil as a flux in the smelting of tin ore.
The palm-oil sector was a major employer of contract labour — predominantly Javanese contractkoelies recruited through the colonial labour service — and a major contributor to the freight revenues of the KPM steamship network that linked Belawan to Europe. By the 1930s palm oil had overtaken rubber as the leading plantation export of the east-coast plain, and the African oil palm has since become the dominant cash crop of lowland Aceh.
Decline and legacy
The depression of the 1930s sharply reduced European demand for palm oil, and the Atjeh estates were forced into a prolonged retrenchment. The Japanese occupation of 1942 interrupted the European trade entirely, and many palm-oil estates were abandoned or partially destroyed during the occupation and the subsequent Indonesian revolution. The surviving estates were nationalised in 1957–1958, and the present-day palm-oil landscape of lowland Aceh — a vast expansion of smallholder and corporate plantings — is the direct descendant of the colonial estates established around Langsa and Tamiang in the 1910s and 1920s.
See Also
- Rubber Industry in Atjeh
- Copra
- Langsa
- Belawan
- Oostkust van Sumatra
- Agrarische Wet 1870
- Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij
- Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden
- Bangka
- Buitengewesten
- 1920
- 1930
Source
DLP-84-Atjeh.pdf, pp. 14-15.