DekelOil dives after 'poor harvest' scuppers production

Dekeloil Public saw its share price dip on Thursday after a poor harvest resulted in year-on-year decreases in fruit collection and sales of palm oil.

The West Africa focused agricultural firm reported an 18.3% dip in collected fresh fruit bunches to 96,195 tonnes at the Ayenouan palm oil project in Côte d'Ivoire for the six months leading up to 30 June, while palm oil sales decreased 9.4% to 22,271 tonnes.

AIM-traded Dekeloil also suffered from weaker international benchmark pricing and the strong appreciation of the Euro against the US Dollar, reporting lower sales prices achieved during the period.

Lincoln Moore, DekelOil’s executive director said: "We have little control over unseasonable harvests and lower global CPO prices, but we can take steps to make the best out of challenging trading conditions. As our cost management programme and our successful efforts to secure external supplies of kernels to make use of lower mill utilisation demonstrate, this is what we are doing."

The firm’s cost saving programme is centred around logistics and plantation management focused on optimising performance.

Despite poor harvests for the first half of the year, the company reported that its production in July so far outstripped that of July 2017, with the board “hopeful this trend will continue for the remainder of Q3 2018 and beyond”.

"While the poor harvest has resulted in a challenging half year period, we believe the prospects for DekelOil are excellent, and I look forward to providing further updates on progress made across our growing portfolio of agricultural projects in West Africa," said Moore.

Dekeloil Public’s shares were down 8.67% at 5.48p at 1223 BST.