Coco oil exports rise 20% in May

MANILA, Philippines - The country’s coconut oil exports rose 20 percent in terms of volume in May from last year as orders from overseas started to pick up, the United Coconut Associations of the Philippines Inc. (UCAP) said.

UCAP executive director Yvonne Agustin said in a telephone interview late Monday that preliminary estimates of the volume of coconut oil exports reached 70,600 metric tons (MT) last month, up from the 58,743 MT in the same month last year.

“This is the first year-on-year increase we saw since October 2010,” she said.

She attributed the rise in shipments in May to an increase in demand for coconut oil by other countries.

She said the supply of copra or the part of the coconut from which coconut oil is extracted, is also sufficient.

The May result brought the volume of coconut oil exports to 296,050 MT as of end-May, which was down by 29 percent from the 416,366 MT in the same period last year.

Agustin said the end-May result this year was lower than in the comparable period a year ago as the volume of coconut oil exports posted declines in previous months.

She said though the UCAP expects the volume of coconut oil shipments to continue to increase for the rest of the year.

“We are keeping our full-year projection as we expect the increase we saw in May to continue in the coming months,” she said.

The UCAP expects the volume of coconut oil shipments of the country to reach 925,000 MT this year.

The volume of Philippine coconut oil shipments reached 823,381 MT last year, below the 900,000 MT projection of the UCAP for that year.

The volume of coconut oil exports last year was also lower compared to the 1.343 million MT shipped in 2010.

The UCAP said the decline in the volume of coconut oil exports last year was due to lower copra supply as the dry spell in the first-half of 2010 affected coconut output and coconut trees experienced stress from strong production for three consecutive years.