Arenga palm sugar comes from an indigenous palm tree, which grows in the natural forest. It is a completely different palm from the oil palm, as arenga palms need a forest environment to survive. the palm sugar is also known for its low glycemic index, making it suitable for most diabetes patients. Because of its low price, and need to work in the forest, it is considered a poor man's crop. Its full production potential of the palms is by far not being used. With the growing market for its caramel-like taste and more favourable health issues, paying higher prices to the farmers, more people are interested in tapping palm trees. currently, we are selling it in the Indonesian domestic market, but production can be doubled to serve the export market. That is why we are currently implementing HACCP certification, so that it can enter the EU market.
In addition, the juice needs to be cooked so that the sugar crystallizes from the juice. We have developed a very innovative system, where we will provide specific cooking stoves, which use wood pellets. Using high quality pellets means a almost 100% burn, hence hardly any smoke developed, an improved health issue. Another innovation made is that the raw material to produce pellets is sourced from local sawmills. Now sawmills simply burn sawdust and other wood waste in the open. This produces a lot of smoke in surrounding villages, as it usually just smolders. Calculations we made show that over 2 tonnes of timber waste is being produced per week. Turning the timber waste into high quality pellets means the end of smoke in surrounding villages, while palm sugar farmers can use the pellets for their cooking stove. Seeing the large stock available, We aim to sell pellets to other villagers, while also entering the domestic/global market, as the calorific value is high enough for the global market. More income and employment is generated in the villages. A win-win-win situation.

Funding

For the preparatory phase we have received partial funding from the Netherland Enterprise Agency (RVO), while also invested ourselves into training and the building of the processing units and machineries that match HACCP certification requirements. January 2022 , we achieved HACCP certification.