About Us​

POME CONSULTANCY has been created in 2020 by BIOTEC’s founders, based on 35 years of daily work with palm oil mills effluents and by-products (see references: 120 mills assessed on three continents, including 31 large scale POME/EFB projects implemented and operated for many years).
Justification of this creation: Mills are usually throwing or misusing their effluents (POME) and Empty Fruit Bunches (EFB), generating environmental impacts and O&M costs, instead of using them in a circular economy. This looks like a non-sense. If the objective is a sustainable and profitable business, Effluents Treatment Plants (ETPs), mitigating environmental impacts, are definitively not the correct way to deal with POME and EFBs.
POME CONSULTANCY orientates palm oil mills to find, define, execute and operate side-line businesses to avoid POME and EFB discharge, generating new raw material, solid and liquid biofertilizers, animal feed and/or energy (gas, steam, electricity).
We sadly observe than most of environmental solutions presently used are only partial: “partial” removal of organic matter (carbon), nutrients, color and pathogens. Additionally, they are expensive (CAPEX), do not produce any valuable/sellable product, and have permanent Operation and Maintenance (O&M) costs. They have no “R.O.I.” (Return On Investment). Finally, they require new investments over years with supplementary O&M costs to meet evolutive local discharge standards. It is a negative circle. Mills involved in this kind of temporary solution will probably close doors at some moment despite a positive social impact and an apparent very attractive financial business.
Most of TPs (Technology Providers) offer what clients ask them to supply but it does not mean that the clients’ requests are what their business need. On the contrary, due to some misunderstanding or lack of interest in the effluents and waste management, most of mills take wrong technical direction from the beginning and must assume it during decades. Additionally, the contractual procedures selected lead also often to some administrative failure in the implementation and/or operation: ETPs or biological valorization units are “biological engines” and cannot be contracted as mill equipment.
The technical choice for effluent and waste management is a difficult decision and depends on many factors (local specificities, soils, energy requirement, topography, markets, business vision, etc.).
AUDITS (on existing infrastructure, operation and procedures) are required before spending more money in the POME and EFB management.
And a CONCEPTUAL ENGINEERING is required before taking decisions on the path to take.