Abstract:

Palm oil is the most commonly used edible oil globally and is found in many consumer products and biofuels. The palm oil industry is one of the key economic drivers of the Malaysian economy, with exports worth RM73.04 billion in 2020. Despite recent years, the Malaysian palm oil industry has faced challenges from changing weather patterns and the over-reliance of plantations on foreign labour. Currently, palm oil-related exports rely heavily on upstream links such as crude palm oil (CPO). Therefore, it is crucial to expand the production and export of high value-added palm oil-derived products such as oleochemicals. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the potential market for Malaysian palm oil downstream products specializing in oleochemicals. The annual data from 1999 to 2016, and the data of export (FOB) and import (CIF) are up to on six digit Harmonize System (HS) code gathered from the UN Comtrade. A total of 107 importing countries were chosen for the study. The results showed that Malaysia's oleochemicals had the highest percentage shift in China (23.84%), followed by South Korea (9.78%) and India (8.31%). Therefore, the study highlights that Malaysia also urgently needs to enter other emerging markets such as South Korea to benefit from the growing cosmetics and personal care market.