The move is also expected to reduce its labour headcount by 55% within the same period, group managing director Mohamad Helmy Othman Basha said.

Helmy said that by the end of 2024, it will improve its man-to-land ratio to 1:17.5. In short, one worker will be able to manage 17.5ha of cultivated land, compared with only 8ha currently.

As its dependence on labour drops, the plantation group also expects to improve productivity.

Helmy, who was speaking at the Oils and Fats International Conference (OFIC), also unveiled seven new initiatives that it has developed internally or in collaboration with start-ups.

These initiatives will be implemented across the group’s operations in Malaysia. There are others that are still in the prototype or concept stages, he said at the conference that was organised by the Malaysian Oil Scientists and Technologists Association.

Helmy said SDP is making work in plantations more sophisticated and therefore less laborious. “This will go a long way towards attracting a more highly-skilled Malaysian workforce to the industry,” he said.

For instance, drones are being used to spray seedlings in nurseries. A single drone can do the work of more than 100 men.

On the ground, unmanned vehicles are undertaking the tasks deemed dirty, difficult and dangerous.

He said SDP’s objective is to cut its dependence on migrant labour for good by the end of 2027.

The plantation industry, which is more than a century old now, is only just beginning to wean itself off manual labour through advanced mechanisation, automation and digitalisation.

Prior to the global outbreak of Covid-19, as much as 80% to 85% of the plantation workforce was comprised of foreign workers.

With more of these workers returning to their home countries during the pandemic, and few coming back to Malaysia now that restrictions have been lifted, plantations are left with insufficient labour.

This has left many plantations with unharvested fruits rotting away, resulting in losses of more than RM10 billion.