The origin of PT
Perusahaan Perkebunan London Sumatra Indonesia Tbk goes back over more than a
century to 1906 with the initiatives of the London-based Harrisons &
Crossfield Plc, as a general trading and plantation management services firm.
The London-Sumatra plantations, which later came to be known as “Lonsum”,
evolved over time to become one of the world’s renowned plantation companies,
with almost 100,000 hectares of planted oil palm, rubber, tea and cocoa
plantations spread across Indonesia’s four largest islands.
Having
diversified into rubber, tea and cocoa in its early years, Lonsum concentrated
on rubber throughout Indonesia’s formative years as an independent nation, and
commenced oil palm production in the 1980s. By the end of the following decade,
oil palm had replaced rubber as the Company’s primary commodity.
Lonsum’s 38
inti estates (Company owned) and 14 plasma estates (smallholder farmer), which
are currently operational in Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan and Sulawesi, make use
of advanced research and development as well as agro-management expertise and a
highly skilled and an experienced workforce. The scope of the business has
broadened to include plant breeding, planting, harvesting, milling, processing
and the selling of palm products, rubber, cocoa and tea. The Company now
has 20 factories which are operational in Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi. Lonsum is
known in the industry for the quality of its oil palm an cocoa seeds, and this
high-tech business is now a major growth driver for the Company.
In 1994,
Harrisons & Crossfield sold its entire interest in Lonsum to PT Pan London
Sumatra Plantation (PPLS), which took Lonsum public by listing its shares on
the Jakarta and Surabaya stock exchanges in 1996. In October 2007, Indofood
Agri Resources Ltd, the plantation arm of PT Indofood Sukses Makmur Tbk, became
the Company’s majority shareholder through its Indonesian subsidiary, PT Salim
Ivomas Pratama. PP London Sumatera (Lonsum) History
