Palm | Kelapa Sawit

While I was in Nanning, the capital city of China's southern province of Guangxi, I visited a local shopping mall. I saw with my own eyes how popular the Arawana cooking oil is.

China, with a headcount surpassing 1.3 billion, is the largest vegetable oil consumer in the world. Its' growing appetite for vegetable oils  has made palm oil the second most consumed, after soyoil.

Middle class consumers in southern China like palm cooking oil (which is flavoured with peanut and walnut oil). There is also soy cooking oil blended with sunflower, corn and rapeseed (which is known as camellia oil there). The Arawana cooking oil enjoys high visibility on the shelves of the supermarkets here. It is produced and distributed by Kerry Oils & Grains (China) Ltd, a unit of the Wilmar Group. Arawana was the official Beijing 2008 Olympics cooking oil.

Here's a photo of the "Mighty" camellia+sunflower cooking oil, another popular brand in China.

When I looked closer at the pricing range of cooking oil here, I realised that people in Malaysia are so lucky. Many Malaysians still get to enjoy subsidised cooking oil.

In China, a 5kg bottled cooking oil is retailed at RMB55 (or RM25). In Malaysia, we can buy that same amount of cooking oil off the shelves at around RM18 only.