BStead ... Jul11

Out of its six core businesses, plantation is the biggest earnings contributor, followed by shipbuilding and property development.
In the first quarter ended March 2011, Boustead Holdings' plantation division contributed RM99 million or 73.6 per cent of its pre-tax group profits.

There is also the injection of two estates and a mill into the REIT that will see to improved performance.

With the RM189.2 million acquisition and leaseback of the Sutera Estate, Taiping Rubber Plantation and the Trong Oil Mill, Al-Hadharah Boustead REIT's total asset value has surpassed RM1 billion. Total asset size has also expanded to some 20,000ha from 16,391ha previously.

Boustead Holdings, the parent of Al-Hadharah Boustead REIT, has an agriculture landbank of 97,648ha. To-date, 76 per cent of the landbank had already been planted with oil palms.

While 20,000ha of Boustead's 74,354ha planted area had been injected into the Al-Hadharah Boustead REIT, Lodin emphasised the REIT is actually open to inclusion of assets from other estate owners.

For the past 25 years, it had partnered Kuala Lumpur Kepong Bhd (KLK) to produce high yielding hybrid oil palm seeds and bred smaller-sized oil palm trees that allow for high density planting.

Boustead's collaboration with the University of Nottingham, for the last decade, that resulted in a Malaysian campus at Semenyih, Selangor.  Its 66 per cent stake in the Nottingham University campus is our contribution in value adding to Malaysia's tertiary education.