Although the palm kernel industry has not attained important dimensions
in the Cameroons, there is no reason why it should not form one of the
staple products of the colony, or why the whole of the trade in palm
kernels should not be transferred from Germany to this country. Hitherto
the quarter of a million tons of palm kernels--valued at over
£4,000,000--exported annually from British West Africa has gone to
Germany, where crushing-mills and manufacturing plants have been
established, while considerable quantities of high-priced kernel oil, in
manufactured or unmanufactured form, have been exported from Germany to
Great Britain. About 50 per cent. of the produce of the crushed palm
kernels is marketed in the form of oil, and the balance is made up into
palm kernel cake, practically the whole of which is consumed in Germany,
where it commands a good price and is in great demand, especially among
dairy farmers.
This profitable German industry has now been suspended owing to the war,
which has rendered it necessary for planters to find a new market for
their produce, and the opportunity seems propitious for an endeavour to
establish it in Great Britain upon a substantial scale. With a view to
arousing interest in the subject in commercial and agricultural circles,
Sir Owen Phillipps, K.C.M.G., Chairman of the West African section of
the London Chamber of Commerce, has issued a timely pamphlet in which
the present position of the trade is described and its potentialities
are indicated. The Anglicisation of the industry, in addition to
promoting Imperial commercial intercourse, and securing increased
industrial employment in the United Kingdom, would furnish British
farmers--who are complaining of the enhanced prices of present
foods--with a new supply of a relatively cheap and excellent feeding
material.
The profitable exploitation of this crushing industry depends upon the
capacity of the British market to absorb a larger supply of palm kernel
oil and upon the possibility of inducing British farmers to adopt the
use of palm kernel cake. There are at present two mills, both at
Liverpool, for dealing with palm kernels, capable together of crushing
annually about 70,000 tons, leaving a balance unprovided for of at least
180,000 tons. To cope with this additional quantity several of the great
milling companies of Liverpool, London, Hull, &c., have already made and
are making alterations in their machinery in order to crush palm
kernels, so that in the near future much greater quantities will be
dealt with. A new mill on the Thames, at Erith, is also being erected,
which, when completed after the war, will be capable of crushing a very
large quantity.
PALM KERNEL CAKE FOOD.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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