PETALING JAYA (Oct 2): Golden Palm Growers Bhd, the company behind the soon-to-be terminated share farming scheme Golden Palm Growers, has now one year to look for a suitable buyer of its oil palm plantation in Kelantan, to cash out of the project. 

Today, 98% of 1,358 growers voted at a general meeting here, in favour of giving the company one year to find the buyer, as opposed to an immediate sale.

With the resolution passed, the management company has now 12 months from today to structure an "optimal realisation proposal".

“With the plantation, we have created an asset for the growers and that asset is worth RM220 million as per an independent valuer, and our job now is to find the optimal realisation proposal,” said the GPGB's new chairman Datuk CRS Paragash, in a statement today.

Seven years into the Golden Palm Growers scheme, GPGB is now citing inclement weather in Kelantan post-El Nino, increasing labour costs amid erratic supply, scarcity of experienced management personnel, persistent mammalian attacks and high transportation costs, among challenges that had resulted in cash flow deficiency and thus, a need for reevaluation.

The growers or investors of the scheme were also told today that Andrew Phang has quit as executive chairman of the company behind the scheme, and that Paragash has taken over the post.

GPGB, which owns 11,280 acres of land in Gua Musang, Kelantan, is a unit of Australian Stock Exchange-listed Sterling Biofuels International Bhd. 

Of the plot it owns, 11,000 acres have been divided into 39,600 grower plots for investors under the scheme, at a price of up to RM9,600 per plot.

As at Aug 20, 2017, a total of 26,550 grower plots (60.3%) have been sold to investors, while the remaining 17,450 (39.7%) are retained by the management company.

"The management company has agreed that on any sale offer received, the management company will first apply the final sale proceeds towards full repayment of the Growers’ capital; thereafter, payment of the 2017 net yield payments due to the growers," read the statement.

"Finally, the remainder of final sale proceeds will be allocated to the management company in respect of its 40% holding in the plantation scheme," the statement said.