Plant Minsawi, Kuala Kangsar4 more
Plant Minsawi, Kuala Kangsar Retrofit from Aug 2024 Stations 8 Figures dated 2026-05-25
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The record // Minsawi Smart Mill

More oil. Half the crew.
Breakdown hours down 75%.

Minsawi Industries is a 41-year-old palm oil mill in Kuala Kangsar, Perak. From August 2024 we put our software on it, while it kept milling. The Star reported it as the world’s first palm oil mill to adopt AI.

Book a site assessment See the eight stations

The Star, 19 November 2024 — Perak facility is world’s first palm oil mill to adopt AI

Ours, relayed in The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026

Oil extraction rate (OER)

+1.17 pp§OER

17.85% → 19.02% out of the same fruit, on this mill’s own baseline.

Ours, relayed in The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026

Mill crew

66→31§HDC

53% fewer people running the mill. A headcount, not a wage saving.

Ours, relayed in The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026

Breakdown hours

12.21→3.08§BRK

Down 75%, monthly average. Ask us how we count a breakdown hour.

Ours, relayed in The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026

Payback

< 2 yrs§PAY

A projection against the retrofit capital.

What we installed

Eight stations at that mill.
Start with these three.

What each one decides, on live plant, every cycle — with the screen it decides it on.

01

Sterilizer recipe selection

Which cycle to run for the load in front of you, not the cycle the shift always runs.

02

Press mesocarp oil-loss prediction

Predicted loss per press, in the cycle — not in next week’s laboratory report.

03

Clarification VCT skimming

Skimming decisions measured at the clarification station instead of judged by eye.

A MyPalm Palm Oil Mill screen, dark navy, titled Production Dashboard. A left navigation column runs Dashboard, Maintenance Dashboard, Production Dashboard, Maintenance Calendar, then Machinery QR Code under Operations, then Production Reports, Maintenance Reports, Prediction Analysis Reports and Weekly Report under Reports, then Master Data Update under Masters. Across the panel sit tabs for Sterilizer Performance, BPR Performance, Sterilizer Vs BPR, Press Performance, Daily Oil Losses and Monthly Oil Losses, with Sterilizer Performance open. Beneath them a filter row carries a From date, a sterilizer selector, a cycle number box and a green search button. The chart is headed Sterilizer Performance: an amber filled curve climbs, plateaus and drops away against an axis labelled Sterilizer Pressure, clock times running along the bottom, and a dotted crosshair marking one instant with a small tooltip naming the pressure at it. Four labelled boxes close the screen: Total Cooking Time, Max Pressure, Holding Time and Max Temperature.
Station 01 — sterilizer recipe selection Seen here one cooking cycle, drawn against pressure and clock time Open full size
A MyPalm Palm Oil Mill screen, dark navy, headed with a press number. Its left navigation carries Prediction Analysis Reports open over Oil Losses Trend Analysis and Oil Losses Prediction Summary. The panel is titled Oil Losses Prediction for that press. A chart plots two keyed series against an axis labelled Oil Losses in per cent — a green line for the losses MyPalm predicted and an amber key for the laboratory's own figure — with a red dashed baseline drawn across it and clock times running along the bottom, and a gold History button at its lower right. Three green panels close the screen: one stating whether predicted oil losses sit under the baseline, one headed Reasons For Oil Losses, one headed Recommendation.
Station 02 — press mesocarp oil-loss prediction Seen here the prediction and the laboratory's own figure, on one axis Open full size

One retrofit, one result. Stations, instruments and software went in together, and the figure above is what the whole retrofit delivered.

An oblique aerial view of a working palm oil mill: fresh fruit bunches tipped onto the receiving floor, a sloped ramp of fruit beneath a long inclined conveyor, sterilizer housings and process buildings behind.
Seen here the receiving end — ramp, tipped FFB, inclined conveyor Condition in operation

The source

Who wrote these
numbers down.

Our figures, presented at the International Palm Oil Millers Conference 2026. Joseph Tek Choon Yee, a former president of the Malaysian Estate Owners’ Association, was in the room and wrote them up in The Edge Malaysia.

The same figure, charted

Drawn from zero, so the gain
is the size it really is.

Gold is the gain.

Ours, relayed in The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026

Before · the mill’s own baseline17.85%

After · reported19.02%

OER · per centGold — the +1.17 pp movementAxis 0–20, linear · zero baseline, no truncation

+1.17

points of OER at Minsawi Industries. Check it: 19.02 minus 17.85.§OER

The crew count, charted

Half the crew, drawn
from zero.

Gold is the posts that came out. It is a headcount at two moments, not a wage bill and not a saving.

Ours, relayed in The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026

Mill crew before66

Mill crew after31

Mill crew · people on the payrollGold — the posts the retrofit removedAxis 0–80, linear · zero baseline, no truncation

−53%

of the mill crew at Minsawi Industries. A headcount at two moments.§HDC

The breakdown hours, charted

Breakdown hours, on
their own axis.

A different unit from the crew count, so it gets its own scale.

Ours, relayed in The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026

Breakdown hours before · monthly average12.21

Breakdown hours after · monthly average3.08

Breakdown hours · per monthGold — the hours the retrofit removedAxis 0–16, linear · zero baseline, no truncation

−75%

of the breakdown hours, monthly average. Ask how we count a breakdown hour.§BRK

Measurement notes

One line per figure. Open a fold for how it was measured.

§OER

OER — +1.17 pp

Ours, relayed in The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026

One mill, before and after, on its own baseline.

How this was measured
Provenance
AIREI results, presented at IPOMC 2026: oil extraction rate from 17.85% to 19.02%.
Basis
Percentage points of oil extraction rate: 19.02 minus 17.85. Not “1.17% better”, not “6.6% better”.
Comparator
The same mill, before and after.
Scope
Minsawi Industries, Kuala Kangsar.
Variance
Ripeness at harvest and the hours from cut to press cap extraction. A mill buying its crop outside holds neither steady.

§HDC

Mill crew — 66 to 31

Ours, relayed in The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026

A count of people at two moments.

How this was measured
Provenance
AIREI results, presented at IPOMC 2026.
Basis
A headcount. Not an FTE average, not a wage cost, not a rate.
Comparator
The same mill, before and after — as with the OER figure.
Scope
Minsawi Industries, Kuala Kangsar.
Variance
Your shift pattern and contract mix shape how much of this is available at your site. A mill already running lean has less of it to find.

§BRK

Breakdown hours — 12.21 to 3.08

Ours, relayed in The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026

A monthly average, before and after.

How this was measured
Provenance
AIREI results, presented at IPOMC 2026: a monthly average from 12.21 hours to 3.08.
Basis
A monthly average of breakdown hours. Ask us how we count one.
Comparator
The same mill, before and after — as with the OER figure.
Scope
Minsawi Industries, Kuala Kangsar.
Variance
The maintenance regime underneath it. Instrumenting a badly maintained plant reports the fault in high resolution; it does not repair it.

§PAY

Payback — under two years

Ours, relayed in The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026

A projection against the retrofit capital.

How this was measured
Provenance
An AIREI forecast.
Basis
The time to earn back the retrofit capital, against the RM4–5 million The Star reported was invested.
Comparator
A forward calculation on the three figures above, plus inputs AIREI holds. Ask for them.
Scope
The Minsawi Industries retrofit, Kuala Kangsar.
Variance
Capital cost, crop price, throughput and uptime. Move any one and the number moves.

How to read it

Read the change,
not the absolute.

Absolute OER is set by how ripe the fruit arrives and how long it waited — a mill controls neither. What it controls is the ramp to the tank. That is where the +1.17 was won.

The install

You could not turn
off the mill.

Minsawi had a crop to process, so there was no commissioning shutdown. Sensors, actuators, control and network went onto live plant from August 2024.

The only window to stop the plant was seven hours on a Sunday. Everything else was done hot.

Ask us about your own crop calendar first. It decides whether a retrofit is possible at your site at all.

The Edge Malaysia, 30 Dec 2024, quoting AIREI CEO Surendran Kuranadan

A mill worker in a hard hat and high-visibility vest walking through the plant, with process housings and a storage tank behind him.
The plant during the retrofit period.

For your process engineer

What you can
read yourself.

No form, no email

Open these now

Smart Mill — the eight stations and what each one does
Smart Palm Oil Mill Brochure 2026, page 3 (PDF)
Unmanned AI FFB Grading — the specification
AIREI AI Grading Brochure, page 2 (PDF) — the key features and the four grading tiers.
The measurement basis behind these four figures
Ask, and it comes with the periods, the definitions and the sign-off attached.

Ask for the measurement basis

Coverage

Who else wrote it down.

Named outlets, real headlines, and a link to each original. Three languages.

Next step

The same question,
on your plant.

A site assessment tells you what your mill is losing today, where, and whether instrumenting it would change that.

Book a site assessment