Developing cooking oil industry

At a time when soybean oil is gaining popularity over palm oil, investment in crushing soy seeds for producing finished cooking oil in local refineries makes business sense. No wonder, companies which were used to refining imported crude oil see the opportunity of crushing soybean for supplying semi-raw materials to their existing refineries by setting up grinding mills of larger capacities. In fact, the City Group made its tentative entry into the crushing business as early as 2005 by installing a mill with a capacity of 1,000 tonnes per day (TPD). Currently, its three mills have a total capacity of 7,800 TPD. Meghna follows close behind with a capacity of 7,000 TPD. What is remarkable is that both refinery giants now get 30-40 per cent supply of their total crude oil from their own crushing plants. It is good to know that more companies are following in their footsteps.

Although soybean oil is enjoying growing popularity, it has to be clarified that this cooking essential is still lagging behind palm oil so far as consumption of the two in the country is concerned. But since 2013 when palm oil's share was 71 per cent to soy oil's 29 per cent, the widely used cheaper cooking oil has lost 18 per cent to stay at 53 per cent in 2022 while its counterpart has rose to 46 per cent over the period. Annual production of soybean in the country amounts to 96,921 tonnes from 62,870 hectares at 1.54 tonnes per hectare---much lower than the world average of 2.79 tonnes/h. But soybean and sunflower stand tremendous prospect of cultivation in the coastal belts as well as in other areas where chars (islets) are coming up. If more lands can be brought under cultivation of these two vegetable crops and the yield increases to a reasonable level for meeting the demand of the country's crushing plants, the local edible oil industry has a chance to flourish.

True, crushing imported soy seeds at local plants contributes to value addition. But if lands not particularly fit for cultivation of any cash crop beyond a mono crop of paddy can be gainfully used for producing soybean or sunflower, the country can develop its own cooking oil industry. In this case, the traditional mustard and sesame oils can also be a contributory factor to the country's self-sufficiency in cooking oil. These two types should also be promoted if their health benefits prove more than palm oil and soybean oil.

When the prospect of vegetable oil industry in the country is bright, it has to be exploited in order to do away with the nation's dependence on imported oil and also to save a huge amount of foreign exchange. Additionally, extraction of oil from various seeds leaves valuable by-products such as soymeal. Soymilk--- highly nutritious and fit for people lactose intolerant and allergic--- can be produced from soybean. So cultivation of soybean can be economically beneficial if other allied industries are set up to produce a range of healthy and nutritious foods. Its unfermented foods include tofu, soymilk, edamame, soy nuts and sprouts while the fermented products are miso, tempeh, natto and soy sauce.