History: The Fat Stock

                    Up-to-date Modern Machinery for dealing with Palm Oil and Kernels at La Societe des Huileries du Congo.

Fed in mixture with locust-bean meal, it is taken readily by stock, and no difficulty need be experienced in storing cake containing a comparatively large percentage of oil."

The County of Northumberland Education Committee has issued a very valuable report on palm-kernel cake and meal, and coconut cake compared with Soya cake for fattening cattle and sheep. The trials were carried out at the County Agricultural Experiment Station, Cockle Park. The summary results were:- 

	Standard Ration.	Palm Kernel Cake Ration	Palm Kernel Meal Ration.	Coconut Cake Ration.
Bollocks, . Heifers, . Average, .	Lbs. 16.50 8.92 12.71	Lbs. 12.44 10.00 11.22	Lbs. 14.19 9.25 11.72	Lbs. 15.70 7.42 11.56

The cakes and meal were kept in the granary and were in quite good condition after being stored for some months.

In some previous trials palm-kernel cake gave the cattle more glossy coats and more ' bloom," but in these trials no such effect was produced on the fattening cattle or on the young stirks.

Better average gains were given by those wintered inside than those wintered outside, but at the end of March practical valuers attached 30s. a head more value to those wintered outside, as they had better coats of hair and were more promising grazing cattle. Palm-kernel meal gave better results than palm-kernel cake with these young cattle, although the meal contained less than 2 per cent, of oil and the cake nearly 6 per cent. The gains per week were quite satisfactory for such store cattle in winter, and each lot went through the winter well.

The sheep used were three parts bred hogs and had been bred near Rothbury in 1915. All the lots made satisfactory gains, which indicated palm-kernel cake and palm-kernel meal as suitable foods for fattening sheep. Again palm-kernel meal gave a better result than palm-kernel cake.

The fattening bullocks made average net gains of from £3 to £6 a head. Their live weight value increased from 47s. to 62s. a cwt. during the fattening period. The fattening heifers made average net gains of 50s. to 64s. a head. The net gains per head for the stirks varied from 10s. to 23s., and their value as stores increased from 42s. 6d. a cwt. at the beginning of the winter to 48s. at the end. The fattening hogs made net gains per head of from 3s. to 5s., and improved in live weight value from 5 1/2|d. to 6 1/4d. a lb. during the fattening period.

Palm-kernel meal is found to be an excellent basis for a pig meal, and as more oil is obtained from palm kernels by means of the extraction process of which palm-kernel meal is the by-product, it was also of the greatest importance to test extracted palm-kernel meal as a feeding-stuff.

The following table gives the composition of palm-kernel cake in comparison with coconut, linseed, and cotton-seed cakes :Constituents per Cent.

	Soya Cake.	Egypt Cotton Cake.	Coconut Cake.	Palm-Nut Cake.	Palm-Kernel Meal.	Maize.
Moisture,	10.40	11.60	11.65	11.00	12.40	14.30
Oil, ...	6 03	4.07	8.37	5.40	1.35	4.54
Albuminoids, .	43.85	24.30	21.75	21.00	18.81	9.89
Carbo-hydrates,	29.97	34.33	41.96	43.2	40.94	68.20
Fibre, .	4.60	20.5	10.75	15.78	22.60	1.47
Ash, Nitrogen,	515	5.55	5.52	3.70	3.90	1.00
	100 00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00	100.00
	7.02	3.89	3.48	3.36	3.01	1.58
Sand,	0.65	0.70	1.05	0.75	0.80	none
Digestible oil, .	5.5	3.8	81	5.2	1.3	4 0
Digestible true albu-
minoids,	37.7	19.9	16.5	17.5	15.6	6.7
Digestible carbo-hy-
drates and fibre,	21.6	28.6	41.5	46.1	49.4	65.4
Starch equivalent,	67	47	80	75	66	82

Another product of the oil palm which is not so generally known is fibre ; this fibre is of very good quality, and realises as much as £60 a ton on the Liverpool market.

It is the only fibre that is sufficiently fine and strong to make fishing lines, and this is the only use to which it is put by the natives. It is obtained from the young pinnae, the older leaves being too strong and coarse to permit the hand-extraction of the fibre.

The process of extraction is laborious, and, therefore, unremunerative, the cost of the production being as high as £75 a ton. There remains, however, a possi-pility that a mechanical or a chemical process may be introduced to separate the fibre from the pinnae cheaply.

The tendency in the palm oil and kernel trade is to have large factories and mills on the spot for treating the material, and, therefore, a few words are necessary on this subject. First, the selection of a site for an oil-palm factory necessitates a careful examination of the productivity of oil palms in the vicinity.

Secondly, factories requiring large supplies of palm fruit near at hand will probably have to resort to plantation methods, in which case the choice of the best variety of palm for planting will be essential.

Thirdly, a factory requiring 5 tons of palm fruit daily and producing from about | to 1 ton of palm oil, will require about 30,000 trees (say 80 to the acre). This is based upon the calculation that, as the fruit heads consist of only 64 per cent, of fruit (the remainder being useless fibrous stem, bracts, etc.), it would be necessary to collect and transport to the factory nearly 8 tons of fruit heads daily, or, taking the number of working days in the year as 200, and thus allowing for the fact that the palms do not bear fully throughout the year, over 1,500 tons per annum.

Smart (Committee on Edible and Oil-producing Nuts and Seeds, Minutes of Evidence, 1916) states that an area of 14 square miles (about 9,000 acres) would be desirable for the establishment of a factory working 10,000 tons of fruit a year, but that such an area in full bearing would produce over 25,000 tons of fruit a year, or 1,000 tons of fruit per annum from 360 acres, which agrees closely with the figure arrived at above. It is obvious that large factories would require considerable areas even under plantation conditions, but that under the present conditions, where the trees are largely wild and irregularly distributed and where it is necessary to allow for bad seasons, the loss of fruit owing to animal and human depredations and other eventualities, a much larger area would be required. From the above considerations it is evident that even a moderate-sized factory must be located in the centre of a large oil-palm area, and that considerable quantities of fruit must be collected and transported over long distances, necessitating a good supply of cheap labour and adequate transport facilities.

 

History: The Commercial Produced

This was done by Germany putting a heavy tariff of £6 a ton on refined edible oils, importing the palm kernels free, and charging her own manufacturers and countries with whom she had special treaties, an extra price which enabled her to undersell the British market. She also captured the Canadian market, although Liverpool enjoyed exceptionally low freight to Canada. Before the war, also, Britain imported margarine to the extent of 1,518,297 cwts. in 1913, value £3,917,701. Of this amount 1,483,417 cwts. came from Holland. Now Britain is making her own margarine from her own raw material, and as it was being bought retail at from 7d. to Is. per lb., while butter was costing 2s. to 2s. 6d., the gain to the consumer at home is great.

Messrs. Lever now have their own steamers running between West Africa and Liverpool for their trade in kernels and oil. In Sierra Leone alone, the palm kernels exported in 1917 reached the record figure of 58,000 tons.

The following table gives the range of the principal constants of commercial palm kernel oil.

The corresponding figures for coconut oil are added for comparison :-

	Commercial Palm Kernel Oil.	Coconut Oil.
Specific gravity 99°/15°,	0.873	0.874
Iodine value, per cent.,	10.3 to 17.5	8.0 to 10.0
Saponification value,	242 to 255	246 to 268
Titer test,	20.0° C. to 25.5° C.	21.2° C. to 25.5° C.
Hehner value,	911	82.4 to 90.5
Reichert-Meissl value,	5.0 to 6.8	6.6 to 7.5
Polenske value,		18.0
Yield of oil,	46.7 to 52.5	64.5 to 74.7

When the weight of a cask of palm oil is ascertained, and in invoicing the same to the buyer in this country, 16 lbs. per cwt., or one-seventh of the whole, is deducted as representing the weight of the cask.

This is an agreed figure and applies only to such casks as are termed " regular," and comply with a certain measurement. In the case of palm kernels, if these are shipped in bags, the actual weight of the bags is ascertained by trial, and this weight is deducted from the gross weight of the kernels. The usual tare is 13 lbs. for five bags ; when shipped in bulk there is no tare.

An ingenious and simple nut-cracking machine has been devised recently by J. O. Drews. It consists of a pair of finely corrugated steel jaws, one of which is fixed vertically to the frame of the machine, while the other is moved by means of a specially constructed cam. The moving jaw has its corrugated face formed at a slight angle to the face of the fixed jaw ; the space between the jaws is, therefore, wider at the top than at the bottom, so that larger nuts dropped between the jaws lodge near the top and small nuts near the bottom. In working, the moving jaw takes up three consecutive positions : (1) discharging, fully open, allowing the broken nuts to fall through ; (2) feeding, partly closed ; (3) cracking, a small auxiliary cam mounted on the main cam engages with the operating rod of the moving jaw, causing the latter to take a short, sharp movement and to crack the nut-shells without breaking up the kernels. The nuts are fed to the jaws by means of a sloping tray ending in a series of shaped bars mounted at right angles to and above the faces of the jaws. A series of -shaped bars mounted on a shaft rotate between the bare on the feed tray, pick up a row of nuts, and throw them between the jaws. The machine is light, simple, and strong, and seems to work well.

The working of another new palm-nut-cracking machine devised by Mr. Kent Johnston has been demonstrated recently in Liverpool. This machine works on the centrifugal plan, but differs from other centrifugal machines in that the nuts are flung from one ribbed rotating disc or drum into or against another disc rotating in the opposite direction. The machine is said to work satisfactorily, and weighs 130 lbs., being of convenient size for transport.

Every such effort to get the most out of kernels will probably be welcomed by merchant and native alike, especially as soap-makers and margarine-makers, and other users of kernel oil are calling for a contract in which kernels will be valued according to their oil con-tents, anything containing less than 48 per cent, of oil to be penalised.

Palm-kernel cake is the residue from the kernels of the nuts of the West African oil palm after expression of the oil.* More than one-quarter million tons of nuts have been for the past few years annually exported from West Africa, but until the outbreak of the war, and the consequent closing of the German ports, this huge trade was almost entirely in German hands. A small quantity of the nuts was imported into Britain, but almost all the cake left from the extraction of these was exported to the Continent, where it has always commanded a considerably higher price than in this country.

" Expression " is the more correct term when the material is crushed in a press and the oil squeezed out, " extraction " when oil is dissolved by suitable solvents (e.g., benzine). Solvent extracted oils are now used extensively for edible purposes.

As far back as 1861, at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, it was experimentally established that kernel cake was good stuff for cattle, but the Germans discovered that palm kernel cake given to milking cows would increase the amount of butter fat by as much as over 1/4 per cent., so that by giving it to their cattle they were able to get as much butter from nine cows as before it took ten cows to produce. For that reason throughout the German Empire for many years palm kernel cake has been more valuable than it has been in England.

At the end of 1914 there were only two mills in Britain dealing with palm kernels, and their combined capacity amounted to only 70,000 tons per annum. Since then, however, a considerable development in this industry has taken place, and new mills (e.g., at London and Hull) have been erected capable of dealing with large quantities, so that, in the near future, very large stocks of palm-kernel cake will be at the disposal of the home feeder.

For the purposes of experiment, 2 tons of the cake were supplied by Messrs. Lever Brothers, Port Sunlight, who, in connection with their industry, crush a considerable quantity of palm kernels. These experiments have shown that palm-kernel cake is very highly digestible, and that its productive value is much higher than its chemical analysis alone would lead us to believe. For this reason three cakes were used in equal quantities throughout the experiment. For the purposes of the experiment, thirty head of cattle, eighteen heifers, and twelve bullocks, all cross-bred two-year-olds, were used. These were divided into three lots of ten each-each lot consisting of six heifers and four bullocks. For a (Messrs. Lever Bros.) short time before the commencement of the experiment they underwent a preparatory period of feeding, in order to accustom them to the experimental foods- Lot I. getting linseed cake, Lot II. decorticated cotton cake, and Lot III. palm-kernel cake. The cakes were fed in mixture with locust-bean meal, and were from the first taken readily by all the animals. The experimental period, which extended to eighty-four days, was divided into three periods of twenty-eight days each, the animals being weighed at the commencement, and again at the end of each period. The final conclusions reached were :"I. Fed in the same quantities, palm-kernel cake may be expected to give equally as good a return in live weight increase as linseed cake or decorticated cotton cake, and at present prices it gives a better monetary return than either of these.

History: Starting to Patented the Machine

The Germans were keen on introducing European methods of improvement. At the Agu plantation in Togoland, for example, the process employed there extracted the best palm oil obtainable, containing only 5 to 6 per cent, of fatty acid. And only as late as July 4th, 1914, Direktor Hupfield, of Togoland, told the Third International Congress of Tropical Agriculture that increase in exportation might be attained by (1) an extension of the districts capable of exporting by improvements in the means of transport ; (2) a more intensive utilisation of the existing palms through better methods of cultivation ; (3) a better utilisation of the crops obtained through improved methods of prepara-tion ; (4) an increase in the existing number of palms by increased activity of the present producers or the introduction of fresh producers ; and (5) methods of preparing the crop by machinery which have been elaborated within the last decade.

Both British and French are now taking up the matter more seriously, and several British firms, notably Lever Bros, and the Co-operative Wholesale Society, have taken up large concessions under European management.

Several important organised efforts have now been made to supplant the wasteful native method for recovering the yellow oil from the pericarp, by establishing modern plants within the area in which the oil palm flourishes. These modern plants offer one of the most favourable opportunities for the investment of capital, as the native labourer will soon find that the collection of fruit for these establishments is easier and more profitable than attempting to extract the oil himself. At the same time, users of palm oil in Europe will be furnished with a product which, on account of the large proportion of glycerine it contains and better average condition, will be of greater value than the variable and uncertain product that is now shipped by the West African native.

The cost of extraction by the native methods is from £10 to £12 a ton. Half that estimate should cover the cost by machinery under European management.

The problem of the mechanical extraction of palm oil has been approached from two standpoints- (1) the construction of small, cheap, portable machines capable of being worked by hand and of being transported from place to place as required ; (2) the erection of central factories dealing with large quantities of palm fruit by means of heavy, power-driven machines.

At least two hand-operated machines, very similar in principle, have been patented for the preparation of palm oil, in both of which the palm fruits are placed in a cylinder with hot water and submitted to the action of beaters, the oil and water being afterwards run off through a grid or sieve. The " Gwira " machine patented by Eglen (English Pat. 3357/1909) has been experimented with on the Gold Coast. The other machine, in which the palm fruit is beaten in hot water for extraction of the oil, is that of Phillips, a native of Lagos ; an early model of this machine was patented in 1907 (English Pat. 9733), and an improved form in 1912 (English Pat. 18370). It consists of a smooth cylinder mounted inside a cylindrical casing and around a shaft bearing beaters. The outer cylinder carries a water tank with a valve to control the flow of water, while the inner cylinder carries on the lower side a sliding sieve to separate the oil and water from the nuts and fibrous waste ; this arrangement of the sieve allows its removal so that the exhausted material can be discharged through a space in the inner cylinder. This machine was exhibited at the International Rubber and Tropical Products Exhibition held in London in 1914, and according to the advertisements issued at that time, it cost £5. Although little is known with regard to the efficiency of oil extraction by this machine, it should prove useful in econo-mising time and labour in the preparation of palm oil on a small scale by natives.

The first power-driven machinery for cracking palm nuts is believed to have been introduced into West Africa in 1877 by Mr. C. A. Moore, of Liverpool, and was devised by Messrs. Mather & Piatt, Ltd., of Salford. Hand machines were introduced about 15 or 20 years later.

In 1901 a prize offered by the Kolonial Wirtschaft-lichen Kommittee of the German Kolonialgesellschaft (Verhand. Kol. Wirt. Kom., 1909, No. 1, p. 54) was awarded for a complete set of small machines constructed by the firm of F. Haake in Berlin and designed to extract palm oil from the fruit and also to crack the nuts and liberate the kernels. Plant made by this firm was exhibited in 1909 in Berlin, and afterwards erected at Mamfe on the Cross River (Cameroons). Similar plant was also erected at Victoria in the Cameroons, and at about the same time a French firm erected a plant of French make at Cotonou in Dahomey. These early factories were all on a small scale, working about 5 tons of palm fruit per day.

Subsequent power machinery falls into two classes-(1) those in which the whole fruit is pressed without removal of the nuts, and (2) those in which the fruit pulp is removed from the nuts and pressed alone.

Noteworthy among the former are (a) the machines devised by Poisson and constructed by Louis Labarre, of Marseilles ; (b) the mill devised by Hupfeld and constructed by Messrs. Humboldt, of Cologne ; (c) the machine patented by Hawkins.
The most prominent of the second class was, before the war, that of Haake, of Berlin. Other machines have been patented by Buchanan and Tyrell, and by Dyer and Innes-Ward.
Complete plant for the preparation of palm oil in which the pulp is removed from the nuts and then pressed is made by A. F. Craig & Co., Ltd., Paisley, Scotland ; A. Olier et Cie., Argenteuil, France ; and Louis Labarre, Marseilles. The plant constructed by the first-mentioned firm is known as the Caledonia dry plant, and differs in method of working from most of the existing processes in not steaming or boiling the fruit or pulp with water before expression of oil. It is claimed for this process that neither the fruit nor the oil comes in contact with water, so that even if fatty acid and glycerine occur in over-ripe fruit no glycerine is lost. The process of depericarping is effected by a machine patented by H. G. Fairfax (English Pat. 18050/1914).

The oil, after being boiled, yields a pleasant and yellow-coloured fat, which is sometimes eaten and relished by Europeans residing in West Africa. Most of it, however, is exported to Europe and used for various purposes by the soap-maker and the chandler, not to speak of war purposes. Some oil is harder than others, notably that from thin pericarps; the softer oil is of two qualities, (a) Lagos and (b) ordinary soft oil, both of these oils fetching from £3 to £4 per ton more than the harder quality.
Soap-makers and other users of palm oil are now demanding a contract for their requirements, based on purity and on the first grade of oil containing not more than 18 per cent of free fatty acids. Many of the inferior grades will thus become unmarketable, except at a seriously depreciated price.
The softer the oil and the more glycerine therein (which varies in inverse proportion with the acidity) the greater its value.

The chemical and physical constants of the palm oil of commerce are: -

Specific gravity at -	• • •	0.9209 to 0.9245
		24° to 42.5° C.
Saponification value,	■ • •	196.3 to 205.5
Iodine value,		53 to 57.4
Reichert-Meissl value,	•	0.86 to 1.87
		94.2 to 97
Solidifying point of fatty acids varies from 35.8° to 464° C, usually
44.5° to 45.0° C.

The kernels or seeds contained in the nuts or "stones" of the oil palm are obtained by cracking the nuts by hand or by the aid of a nut-cracking machine, after the orange coloured palm oil has been extracted from the outer pulpy portion of the fruit. In Sierra Leone, this is, principally, the work of thousands of small farmers in the Colony and Hinterland, who, with wives and families, work at this industry during the season. Their produce is collected by agents and sub-agents representing the large trading firms.

The kernels are exported, and the expression of the kernel oil carried out in Europe. Palm kernel oil is white in colour and of rather softer consistence than palm oil. The kernel, when it reaches the mills, is treated either by the crushing or chemical extraction processes to obtain this oil. The oil forms about 50 per cent, of its contents, and has a very high commercial value, being sold at about £40 per ton in peace time, and at a much higher figure during war. Formerly employed solely in the manufacture of soap, candles, etc., palm kernel oil has latterly been more and more in demand among the makers of edible products, such as " nut-butter," chocolate fats, etc. Before the great World War, most of our supplies of this oil were imported from the Continent. Now that the question of the people's food supplies has become one of vital moment to the country, the production of large quantities of wholesome nut-butter, sold at almost one-third the price of ordinary butter, and manufactured entirely within our own borders from produce supplied by British Colonies, may be regarded as a factor of no small importance in furthering the national policy by facilitating domestic economy.
Before the war the Germans imported kernels from Liverpool, and then sent the oil back to that port and undersold the Liverpool crushers.