• 

A man who stood tall upholding the name of Malaysian palm oil industry

SC Chin, Research writer
May 3rd, 2019 (Updated May 4th, 2019)

The Malaysian oil palm industry has ceainly gone through its fair share of ups and downs over the last century. From the moment Frenchman Henri Fauconnier first planted oil palm at Tennamaram Estate in Batang Berjuntai (now known as Bestari Jaya) in 1917, it set off an adventurous yet fruitful journey for the industry.

From pioneers who laid the foundations in the early days, to dynamos who took it to greater heights in the decades that followed, everyone had an important role in shaping the industry to its present dominant state.

Today, Malaysia is at the forefront of championing the sustainability of this fiercely contested crop amid many disputable smear campaigns. Yes, the Malaysian oil palm industry has come a long way since the primitive days at the turn of the 20th century.

We owe our success to the leadership and stewardship of many people across different generations. Even though some have passed on, their legacy just lives on. And there is one man in particular, whose name is truthfully upheld by the industry fraternity as - “The Palm Oil King” of Malaysia.

Danish born Tan Sri Borge Bek-Nielsen may not be a household name that lingers on our lips, but he certainly left a trail of commanding footprints in our history book, as far as the Malaysian oil palm industry is concerned.

Knowing so little about a name that is so iconic to the industry is such a shame. Call it a tribute to a special man, the late Bek-Nielsen deserved many rounds of applause for his selfless contributions to the industry, spanning nearly six decades from 1951 to 2005.

The story of this very down-to-earth former chairman of United Plantations (UP) can be both fascinating and inspiring. The way he dedicated his life to the industry made him a man of determination and tenacity with a sharp vision driven by his courage and farsightedness.

Bek-Nielsen carried with him the embodiment of an engineer (how he started his career at UP), innovator, entrepreneur, industrialist, leader, mentor, motivator, philanthropist, discipline and integrity – all of which made him such a respected figure in the industry.

He was a game-changer who would stay ahead of his peers, putting his ingenuity to good use.

Bek-Nielsen was affectionately known as the de facto guardian who stood the ground for the Malaysian oil palm industry when the American soybean lobby launched the infamous smear campaign against palm oil in the 1980s.

Armed with detailed research findings and a dedicated organizational support structure from the Malaysian government, he took on the propaganda power of the rich, protectionist West. Together with Tun Dr. Lim Keng Yaik, the then minister for primary industries, and Tan Sri Dr. Augustine Ong, then director-general of Palm Oil Research Institute of Malaysia (PORIM), they toured America to restore the reputation of Malaysian palm oil, crushing the make-believe myths with hard scientific facts.

Not discrediting the other team members who fought hard for the livelihoods of all the stakeholders, Bek-Nielsen was instrumental in turning the tide on their opponents in the counter-attack, fueled by his fervent and energetic temperament.

Bek-Nielsen arrived in Malaysia (known as Malaya then) in 1951 as a young mechanical engineer for UP and worked his way up to be the senior executive director in 1971 and was finally appointed as the chairman of the plantation group from 1978 to 1982.

The Dane is known for his resourcefulness that revolutionized UP to a very efficient state with industry-wide standards, thus becoming a role model for the Malaysian oil palm industry ever since.

The Unitata refinery in Jendarata, Teluk Intan, which came into operation in 1974, is one of the export-led industrialization efforts by Bek-Nielsen to open up more markets.

“Few have managed what Bek-Nielsen has done and nobody in the industry has ever doubted it, that UP is considered the best oil palm plantation in the world,” said John Madsen, the former CEO of Carlsberg Malaysia, who first met Bek-Nielsen in 1981.

Recalling his visit to UP’s refinery, Madsen said: “The refinery from the outside looks like an office building….. Not a single drop of oil or a spot on the floor. Everything is stainless steel and as clean as your living room! Bek-Nielsen was an extremely tidy, orderly and fastidious person. Everything just had to be right, to be perfect.“

Some of Bek-Nielsen’s colleagues told Madsen: ”We could never have had a better leader. He was tough but always fair”.

Bek-Nielsen won enormous respect from his workers by being thorough, never compromising on quality but by showing his passion for work. He also showed them how much he cared by providing all workers with the best housing, schools, nurseries, sports facilities, old folks homes and houses of worship for all religions.

Even the lowest paid worker had his own house for his family. Bek-Nielsen did everything he could to ensure that all workers were treated well and respected as human beings. He understood and lived by the philosophy that you get much more in return, business-wise, by giving.

“Mr. Bek-Nielsen lived and worked by the principles of honesty, integrity and hands-on leadership…. or management by walking around! He was often spotted around the estate checking up on work, progress and so forth,” said one of his workers in remembrance of the great Dane.

Bek-Nielsen had shown us what a good corporate citizenship should be. He cared for everything. He ploughed the fruit of success back into the community. He put things into action and turned dreams into reality.

He fully understood the importance of knowledge sharing to steer the industry further and that was how the Bek-Nielsen Foundation Lecture Series came into fruition.

I wish I could tell you everything about the remarkable life of Bek-Nielsen and the UP legacy he left behind in fewest words possible. But I think Susan M. Martin did a really great job. This is a must-read: The UP Saga.

And on the sustainability issue that flared up in the West in the early 2000s, UP took this new trend very seriously under the auspices of Dato’ Carl Bek-Nielsen, current chief executive director of UP and his younger brother Martin Bek-nielsen, UP’s executive director, after the official retirement of their late father in 2003.

Concerted efforts were taken by the two brothers to ensure that the spirit of sustainability was “built into” the UP fabric and not just "bolted on", hence leading to United Plantations becoming the world’s first certified producer of sustainable palm oil under the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2008. Since then, UP has taken a step further, obtaining Asia's only producer with the RSPO Next certification then, surpassing even the strictest sustainability criteria in the West.

“The fight to uphold palm oil's name continues, this time it’s under the topic of sustainability. This will be a long drawn battle but a war which we can win by doing what is necessary and by adapting to change.”

“I believe very much in the notion of conservation, which means striking a vital balance between development and environmental protection, and living up to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, so no one is left behind and where opportunities are provided for all, especially the developing nations and not just the developed nations.”

“The palm industry has a vital role to play here and I believe that if we make the right but tough decisions, we can come out on top far ahead of all other agricultural crops,” remarked Dato’ Carl Bek-Nielsen, affirming UP’s commitment towards nurturing a healthy oil palm ecosystem through environmentally and operationally sustainable practices.

To sum it all up, the big-picture thinking of this story - the Malaysian oil palm industry certainly needs more movers and shakers like Tan Sri Borge Bek-Nielsen, whose lifelong enthusiasm and optimism, together with his botanical and mechanical innovation, brought forth good practices that

Two Familes Sri Lanka bombings

*Two Super-Rich Families Ended Up on Opposite Sides of Easter Attacks... A story of unbearable grief... Islamic extremism, madness and hatred*😣




(10 min read) 😃👇




By New York Times, Jeffrey Gettleman, Kai Schultz, Mujib Mashal and Russell Goldman

April 27, 2019




COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A little before 9 a.m. on Easter Sunday, Anders Holch Povlsen, the richest man in Denmark, was having breakfast with his family at the Table One restaurant in the Shangri-La Hotel in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo.




The restaurant was decorated with crates of oranges, apples and large, uncut pineapples, and the Povlsens looked out on the ocean rollers crashing into a sea wall not far away.




At the same time, Ilham Ibrahim, the son of one of Sri Lanka’s wealthiest spice traders, was heading down to Table One in an elevator. Wearing a baseball cap and a large backpack, he stepped into the elevator with a friend wearing the same thing. Right before the doors opened, CCTV shows, Mr. Ibrahim’s friend flashed him a long, white smile.




The two families, the Povlsens and the Ibrahims, were about to intersect.




One was a billionaire in dollars. The other, a billionaire in rupees. One built a fortune through jeans, turtlenecks and all kinds of hip clothing. The other, through white pepper, black pepper and all kinds of spices.




They both were well-known and admired, part of wildly successful, close-knit business families from opposite ends of the world and perhaps opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.




In an instant, five of their children — Ilham, Inshaf, Alma, Agnes and Alfred — were blown to pieces, one side slaughtered by the other.




Two of the Ibrahim sons — Ilham and his older brother, Inshaf — were among the suicide bombers behind the series of devastating attacks around the country. Sri Lanka’s Muslims have been painfully perplexed by the question of why two of their most privileged sons would do this.




“Everybody keeps asking me that question,” said Hilmy Ahmed, the vice president of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka. “I don’t know if there ever will be an answer.”




A week after 250 people were killed in the attacks by Islamist extremists, Sri Lanka remains in shock. Fear is printed on so many faces. An unnatural quiet fills areas that should be busy, like Old Moor Street in Colombo where the Ibrahims ran their spice empire from behind an unassuming storefront with a gray gate.




Investigators from half a dozen countries, including the United States, are still combing through the three hotels and three churches that were hit, searching for clues of how an obscure Islamist group with no history of serious violence could execute one of the deadliest attacks in the world in recent years.




Behind each of the little white funeral flags fluttering across Colombo is a story of almost unbearable grief — of young couples who died together, of shrapnel piercing toddlers’ flesh, of people who will love no more.




Perhaps the most striking is how the paths of the Ibrahims and Povlsens, two powerful families with so much to live for, crossed that day.




A Visionary Businessman

The Shangri-La Hotel rises up as a sleek tower along Colombo’s scenic Galle Face drive, a 32-story rectangle of steel and bluish glass with unobstructed views of the Indian Ocean. The Povlsens stayed here, part of a beach vacation to Sri Lanka during their children’s Easter school break.




It was Anders, the intensely private chief executive of a huge family-run fashion company called Bestseller; his wife, Anne; and their four children, ages around 5 to 15.




Alma was the oldest. She had shared a few pictures of her trip on Instagram, but it was almost as if she were keeping her posts intentionally vague: glassy waves viewed from an empty beach, a tree canopy against a bright tropical sky, a portrait of her siblings, taken only from behind.




There may be a reason behind this. In the late 1990s, a blackmailer trespassed on Anders’ parents’ estate and threatened to kill them if he wasn’t paid. A few years later, kidnappers abducted a man for ransom in India, mistaking him for Mr. Povlsen.




Soren Jakobsen, a biographer who wrote about the Povlsens, said the family “has had security as their top priority for 20 years.” Anders, 46, didn’t like anyone taking his picture and avoided social media.




The Povlsens live in a secluded, 600-year-old manor house. They also own several castles and 220,000 acres in Scotland, which Anders has committed to “re-wilding,” as he calls it. He is worth about $8 billion, Forbes says.




He hobnobs with Danish princes, raising chickens and brewing beer with them, leading a charmed life that in Denmark has spawned near hagiography. Bestseller employees and people in his town, Stavtrup, said that he was down to earth and that they didn’t fear him.




“Anders Holch Povlsen is not a smart ass,” Mr. Jakobsen said, “but a solid, honest and visionary businessman. That’s why they are supporting him.”




That was nearly the same thing many people said about the Ibrahims.




He Never Showed His Face

Mohamed Ibrahim loved to tell the story of his ring.




It was the late 1960s, and he was an uneducated teenage boy from Delthota, a small town in Sri Lanka’s lush center. He sold his favorite ring for bus fare to get to Colombo, by himself. He never looked back.




In the bowels of Colombo’s Muslim quarter, he slaved away as a cook, then as a vendor of onions. Then he got into sesame and pepper. Sack by sack, he inched up the spice trade.




Sri Lanka’s tropical climate and rich soil produce some of the world’s most desired spices. Until last week, Mr. Ibrahim ran one of the island’s biggest spice exporters, sending 20 million pounds of pepper to India each year.




He bought and sold so much, merchants said, that he could set the price. He also served as the president of the Colombo Traders Association, lived in a million-dollar mansion on Colombo’s outskirts and kept a fleet of six cars, including a BMW.




Family members said Mr. Ibrahim, even at around 70, was a tireless worker, up at 4 a.m., off to the mosque, then a simple breakfast at home. He spent the rest of the day in his spice factory, rubbing the peppercorns between his fingers, inspecting the quality of his products.




The Ibrahims’ office on Old Moor Street is tucked between bare shops where the smells of cumin, chili and cinnamon mix in the air.




“He calls everyone brother,” said A.B. Kaldeen, a date importer who remembered Mr. Ibrahim’s generosity during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting. “Even the investigators told us they know he is a good person.”




Neighbors often spotted him walking down Old Moor Street with his head down, eyes on the ground, in a slight stoop.




His eldest son, Inshaf, around 35, was flashier. He drove a new white Toyota Landcruiser and stood taller than most Sri Lankan men, around 5 feet 11 inches, with a muscular build. Friends said he walked fast, no matter where he was going.




Years ago, at D.S. Senanayake, considered one of Colombo’s most prestigious schools, his nickname was Kudda, or Powder, an affectionate reference to the family’s spice business.




Inshaf was being groomed to take over, and his father set him up with a copper pipe factory. A picture from 2016 shows Inshaf beaming as he and his father accept an award from a minister — one of several awards bestowed on the Ibrahims from the Sri Lankan government.




He was a handsome man, healthy looking, and sported a snug-fitting gray suit and a long wispy beard.




Ilham, the second son, around 31, was more withdrawn. Merchants on Old Moor Street barely saw him. It seems his job was to oversee a family pepper farm near Matale, a city a few hours away.




“Ilham never showed his face to people,” said a relative who did not want to be named, saying it would bring him problems to be publicly connected to the Ibrahim brothers. “He was not so comfortable.”




‘Be Strong’

It’s not clear how long the Povlsens spent in Colombo: Alma’s Instagram posts indicate that she was in Sri Lanka at least four days. One image, taken on the Thursday before Easter and tagged Sri Lanka, shows three younger children, presumably her siblings, sitting at the edge of a swimming pool framed by tall palm trees. The caption reads: “Three little darlings.”




The night before the Easter attacks, according to a family member who spoke with journalists, Inshaf told his wife that he was traveling to Zambia. As he said goodbye, he lingered an extra moment outside the car and said, “Be strong.”




He then checked into the Cinnamon Grand hotel in Colombo. His brother Ilham checked into the Shangri-La. Inshaf used a fake identity card, but Ilham used his real identification, a decision that, after the attacks, would have additional deadly consequences.




CCTV footage from the Shangri-La shows Ilham stepping into the elevator and later into the Table One restaurant with another man who has now been identified as Zaharan Hashim, the bombings’ suspected mastermind. When the authorities figure out how they met, it will unlock a lot about what was about to unfold.




The authorities say that Mr. Zaharan was an extremist Muslim preacher and recruiter for the Islamic State from eastern Sri Lanka who attracted a small following by posting fiery videos on YouTube.




Last year, Mr. Zaharan was preaching hateful messages against non-Muslims in a town about 30 miles from where Ilham managed the family pepper farm. At the time, in this same area, feelings were raw between Buddhists, who are the majority in Sri Lanka, and Muslims, who make up about 10 percent of the population.




Buddhist monks had just led riots that killed several Muslims. Police officials said Mr. Zaharan had tapped into this and encouraged young men in the area to deface Buddhist statues.




It is not clear how Mr. Zaharan and Ilham met, but members of the Ibrahim extended family say Ilham was more devout than others in his family and that his young wife, Fatima, covered her entire face with a veil, unusual in Sri Lanka.




The mutual attraction makes sense: If Ilham was looking for spiritual guidance, Mr. Zaharan may have offered that. And if Mr. Zaharan had murderous plans, then the Ibrahim family fortune could help finance them.




Mother Blows Up Her Children

On Easter Sunday, the skies above Colombo were clear. The sun beat down. All of the major hotels — and churches — were crowded.




Table One was filling with guests. They sat in long rows in green cushioned chairs, the room lit by bright windows. The food on offer included the likes of English breakfast sausages, fish curry and string hoppers (spongy rice noodles popular in Sri Lanka).




Ilham and Mr. Zaharan entered the restaurant from different sides. Around 8:50 a.m., they blew themselves up.




Asanga Abeyagoonasekera, a foreign policy expert for Sri Lanka’s Defense Ministry, was staying with his family on the ninth floor. He says the whole building shook.




Mr. Abeyagoonasekera rushed down the fire escape with his wife and two young sons. Gravely wounded people were stumbling outside. The ground was covered in blood. He saw a Western woman being carried away.




“She was right in front of me,’’ he said. “She was hit. She was lifeless.”




Mr. Abeyagoonasekera does not remember seeing Mr. Povlsen or his family. At that moment, he said, all he and his wife were trying to do was cover their sons’ eyes.




As soon as they got home, his 6-year-old threw up.




Thirty-three people were killed at the Shangri-La, including three of Mr. Povlsen’s four children. It is not clear how the blast killed half of the family and spared the rest.




In a photo taken at the National Hospital of Sri Lanka in Colombo a few hours later, a man who appears to be Mr. Povlsen clutches a mobile phone to his ear, his shirt stained with blood, his left eye nearly swollen shut. When a Sri Lankan journalist asked to speak to him, he shook his head.




At the Cinnamon Grand, CCTV footage shows Inshaf, wearing a backpack and ball cap, stepping into the buffet room. But then he stops. He walks forward and then back, forward and then back, several times, his body tight.




“He was clearly reluctant,” said the family member. “He was always more connected to people than Ilham.”




But whatever hesitation he might have been feeling, Inshaf overcame it. He killed himself and 20 others.




Within minutes of one another, seven suicide bombers across Sri Lanka detonated backpacks stuffed with powerful explosives, blowing apart people at three hotels and three churches.




Because Ilham used his real identification card when he checked into Shangri-La, the police quickly figured out who he was. Within hours, constables swarmed the Ibrahim mansion.




They were greeted at the door by a woman who then turned around and dashed up the stairs. It was Fatima, Ilham’s wife.




At the top of the stairs in front of her three children, Fatima blew herself up, killing three police officers and all of the children, ages 5, 4 and nine months. Police officials said she might have been pregnant, too.




Mr. Ibrahim, the family patriarch, was handcuffed to a police officer and taken away.




The next day, Mr. Povlsen, his wife and their only surviving child, Astrid, left Colombo on a private jet.




On Thursday, more than 1,000 people in the Povlsens’ town, Stavtrup, marched in a torchlight vigil up to the family’s home. Some could not hold back their tears. People were crying even in the supermarket.




Mr. Ibrahim remains in custody: Most of his associates say they believe he knew nothing about the suicide plot.




Mr. Ahmed, the vice president of Sri Lanka’s Muslim Council, said that even though Mr. Ibrahim is 70, he is likely to be tortured.




“If they need to, they will,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”