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Palm oil is derived from the fleshof the fruit of the oil palm species E. Guineensis. In its virgin form, the oil is bright orange-red due to the high content of carotene. 

Palmoil is semi-solid at room temperature; a characteristic brought about by its approx. 50 percent saturation level. Palm oil (and its products) has good resistance to oxidation and heat at prolonged elevated temperatures; hence, making palm oil an ideal ingredient in frying oilblends. Manufacturers and end-users around the world incorporate high percentages of palm oil in their frying oil blends for both performance and economic reasons.

In fact, in many instances, palm oil has been used as 100 percent replacement for traditional hydrogenated seed oils such as soybean oil and canola. Products fried in palm oil include potato chips, frenchfries, doughnuts, ramen noodles and nuts.

The oil palm produces two types of oils; crude palm oil (CPO) from the fibrous mesocarp and crude palm kernel oil (CPKO) from the kernels. Although both oils originate from the same fruit, palm oil is chemically and nutritionally different from palm kernel oil. It is one of the only two mesocarp oils available commercially, the other being olive oil.

In conventional milling process, the FFB’s are steriliszed and the fruitlets stripped off. The loose fruitlets are then digested and pressed to extract the CPO. The kernels are separated from the fibrous mesocarp in the press cake and later cracked to obtained CPKO.