Serendipalm employs a unique process for the production of our fair trade and organic palm oil. It is modeled after the village-style oil production common in the Eastern Region of Ghana. It deliberately avoids large-scale plantations and heavy machinery. Everything begins in the fields where our organic palm bunches are harvested and then taken to our oil mill in Asuom. The following gallery provides an overview of our production of red palm oil.
These is a pile of bunches in storage laying there for maximum 48 h to get soft and then processed.
The first step in production is separating the fruits from the bunch.
Close Up separating fruits and stalk.
In this picture you see the orange palm fruits flying around by hitting the stalk with an axe.
This is a close up of cleaning a fruit. The fruit is peeled out of the leaves. The leaves are brought back to the field. To give back organic matter to the soil.
This is the fruit cleaning where most of our employees are working. In peak season 150 woman. They removing the fruits from the leaves and out of the remaining stalk. This is very traditional and other bigger companies have machinery for this. But this is not our way. We want to give many people a place to work and not replacing them with machinery. Not now and not in future.
The womans are sitting together in groups. In front of them the fruits that have to be cleaned.
This is how clean the fruits look. Out of this fruits we are producing our palm oil.
This is a palm fruit cut in half. On the outside of this fruit half, you can see the mesocarp. This is the part we are using for producing our oil. The black part in the middle with white flesh is the palm kernel. The kernel is used to produce palm kernel oil.
Loose palm fruits
Before pressing the palm fruits in our expellers. They have to be steamed to get soft and break down the oil bearing cells. This step took around 2.5 / 3.0 h. The bottom of the pot is filled with water and the fire gives the needed heat to generates steam. The steam is migrating trough the fruits and make them soft.
Linda Anim is filling loose palm fruits into one of our steamers.
This are the steamers in action. You can see how the hot steam exit the top.
The steamed fruits are filled into our expellers using this big hopper on top. The screw inside moves the fruits to an area inside where the pressure is increased and the palm fruit is getting pressed. On the right outlet the fibre and nuts are coming. To the front the press liquor flows.
This is the top view into the hopper. The fruits now have a darker color. On the bottom you see one pan with fibre and nuts the other contains the press liquor. This liquor contains fibre, water and palm oil.
Close up view to the press liquor. This liquor is ready to be clarified.
Until March 2018 the press liquor was separated by big clarifiers. The liquor was cooked with water to separate oil from water & solids. The clarifier are slow and need a lot of fire wood. On top of this the losses where quite high. So…
Because of this Serendipalm is using a decanter for separating the oil. This is a special centrifuge that will separate the oil from water and fibre. This will minimize the oil loss. The byproduct is just solids and water. The oil has a great taste and can be sold in Ghana and Germany for food consumption.
This is our clean food graded palm oil. It is pumped from here into our 30.000 liter storage tank. From this tank it is shipped to our costumers.
These are our two storage tanks for organic palm oil. Left tank (stainless steel) is used for storage of food grade and right tank (mild steel) for cosmetic grade oil.
By-products:
The picture shows the palm nut and fiber. This by-product comes from pressing the mesocarp of the palm fruits. At this unit nuts and fiber are separated from each other. The palm nuts are sold to a customer project in Togo "Alafia" for producing palm kernel oil. The fibre is used for firing furnaces and also sent to the field as organic matter.
Palm fruits are shown in the left bowl. The right is showing the empty fruit bunches. This will be send back to the field.
All by-products of the organic production are useful. All the empty fruit bunches will be taken back to the field to give organic matter back to the soil. In the picture, Belinda Nyarko is showing how she is loading the empty bunches into a container for transport.