Fullwell Mill

Fullwell Mill is working with Traidcraft and Serendipalm, a well established ethical Crude Palm Oil (CPO) producing business, based in Ghana, to develop and scale up fair trade  palm oil for use in the manufacture of a range of retail products and to demonstrate the viability of fair trade palm oil for roll-out to other brands.

The FRICH project will build up the institutional capacity of Serendipalm through: provision of additional infrastructure in the new expanded processing factory;  laying down foundations for future construction of additional processing and refinery facilities; boosting farmer productivity; exploring opportunities to market secondary products such as cocoa; and researching additional technologies to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

A second component of the project will focus on finding markets for FTO palm-oil-based products. Project partner, Traidcraft, are one of the UK's longest established and most innovative fair trade businesses, and have an excellent track record in this area. Alongside this, Fullwell Mill, as a specialist food manufacturing business will explore and research the market for use of the oil as a food ingredient and processing-aid.

The project's primary goal is to up-scale Serendipalm's operations to reduce unit costs to a point where their products are competitive within the growing opportunity for niche ethically certified  palm oil, and create a direct link to market through new branded products developed by Traidcraft, and ingredient products identified by Fullwell Mill, to guarantee markets for the company's products, and thereby guarantee markets for small-holder farmers' fresh palm fruits.

The project's secondary goals are to develop a model for improved efficiency of medium-scale processing of palm oil in Ghana which gives a whole range of potential social and economic benefits.  The hope is that other processors of palm oil in Ghana may follow the technological lead of Serendipalm and adopt improved technologies.

The project aims to produce the only FTO palm oil that works exclusively with smallholders and their communities, uses a technology specifically developed for small oil mills, still emphasizes the commitment of value-added markets, and strives for efficiencies and economies of scale.  The project aims to return palm oil to West Africa, where it originated, yet with a new mission – the amalgamation of business and rural development – and with value-added markets for FTO products, from which West African palm oil has to date been entirely excluded. 

The project is also innovative in that it involves its smallholder fruit suppliers in a program to improve soil fertility and productivity by natural / Organic means, involving the return of nutrient rich process waste streams as fertilizing mulch or compost to supplying farms.  No such operation exists, on that scale, in the whole of West Africa.