Plant Minsawi, Kuala Kangsar4 more
Plant Minsawi, Kuala Kangsar Retrofit from Aug 2024 Stations 8 Figures dated 2026-05-25 Figures Published, not live
EN BM
Talk to an engineer

A.I. Based Smart Palm Oil Mill

Eight stations. One mill. Nothing torn out.

A 41-year-old mill, instrumented while it kept running — bar one seven-hour Sunday window (The Edge Malaysia). The Star called it the world’s first palm oil mill to adopt AI.

Book a site assessment See the eight stations

Launched by the Minister of Plantation & Commodities — 19 Nov 2024, Minsawi Industries, Kuala Kangsar

Aerial view of the mill's fruit reception area: fresh fruit bunches heaped in the ramp hopper and riding an inclined conveyor up into the mill house, with a delivery lorry, a small site office and the process buildings around it.
Minsawi Industries, Kuala Kangsar, Perak  //  FFB reception, existing plant

The stations

What gets instrumented, station by station.

Names and capabilities below are taken as printed from AIREI’s 2026 Smart Palm Oil Mill brochure, which names eight stations. Eight is the current operating set. A “station” is a place in the plant; a “module” is a piece of software inside MyPalm.

Station 1 / 8
FFB RAMP & WEIGHBRIDGE
Source BROCHURE P3
A grapple crane lifting fresh fruit bunches onto a mill reception ramp, a heaped load below it and mature oil palms along the boundary behind.
01

FFB Ramp & Weighbridge

  • Online FFB analysis
  • Automatic opening and closing of ramp door
  • Supply chain traceability (linked via MyPalm Plantation and MyPalm Dealer with smallholder polygon maps)
A row of tall riveted sterilizer vessels inside a mill, steam venting from a bolted flange, steel grating underfoot and warm light down the gangway.
02

Sterilizer

Remote monitoring via MyPalm
  • Auto selection of cooking recipes based on FFB quality
  • Online USB analysis
  • Automated feeding control using AI based cameras
A screw press in operation, pressed fibre extruding in a thick mat from the outlet with steam rising off it and a yellow machine guard above.
03

Digester & Press

Remote monitoring via MyPalm
  • Automated level and temperature control
  • Water dilution control
  • Remote monitoring via MyPalm
Clarification tanks under a mill roof, their green covers and steel walkways receding into the shed with daylight coming through the roof lights.
04

Clarification

  • Automated level and temperature control
  • Online VCT underflow oil losses monitoring
  • Automated oil skimming in VCT
Large steel cyclones and ducting in a kernel plant, the pale conical vessels rising into the roof space of the shed.
05

Kernel Plant

Remote monitoring via MyPalm
  • Kernel bunker and kernel silo level monitoring
  • Temperature control
  • Remote monitoring via MyPalm
A mill boiler house with its tall stack, blue-roofed sheds and pipework below, seen from outside against a bright sky.
06

Boiler

Remote monitoring via MyPalm
  • Real time boiler and turbine data monitoring
  • Auto boiler fuel control QR code based maintenance
  • Remote monitoring via MyPalm
Crude palm oil storage tanks at dusk, a spiral access stair climbing the nearest shell, warm low light on the steel.
07

CPO Storage Tank

  • Automatic tankgauging system to monitor stock
  • Real-time notifications to detect unauthorized movements
  • Instant OER calculation using flowmeter
A mill operator seen from behind at a data-room console, facing a bank of screens carrying blue process graphics, charts and plant views. Their face is not visible.
08

Data Room

  • Real-time reports
  • AI based decision making to ensure smooth process control
  • MyPalmGPT features to assist production and maintenance team

The stations are listed in brochure order, not in the order the oil flows, and The Edge Malaysia lists the same eight in the same order. Every station name and capability below is as printed in brochure p3. Photographs captioned “Minsawi, existing plant” are that plant; the rest show a station of this kind, not this mill.

1.0 FFB Ramp & Weighbridge

The crop, the supplier and the day’s quality all arrive here at once. The ramp door stops being somebody’s job.

  • Online FFB analysis
  • Automatic opening and closing of ramp door
  • Supply chain traceability (linked via MyPalm Plantation and MyPalm Dealer with smallholder polygon maps)

Capabilities as printed // Smart Mill brochure 2026, p3 — and independently printed by The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026, which lists the same eight stations in the same order

A tipper truck discharging fresh fruit bunches onto the mill's receiving floor, loose fruit spilling across the concrete apron under a dark overcast sky.
FFB delivery, reception ramp // Minsawi, existing plant

1.1 Sterilizer

The cook is chosen from the fruit, not from the roster.

  • Auto selection of cooking recipes based on FFB quality
  • Online USB analysis
  • Automated feeding control using AI based cameras
  • Remote monitoring via MyPalm

Capabilities as printed // Smart Mill brochure 2026, p3 — and independently printed by The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026, which lists the same eight stations in the same order

1.2 Digester & Press

This is where oil is lost. It is the station the closed loop is built around.

  • Automated level and temperature control
  • Water dilution control
  • Remote monitoring via MyPalm
  • Real-time prediction of mesocarp fibre oil loss

Capabilities as printed // Smart Mill brochure 2026, p3  —  see what happens to that prediction →

1.3 Clarification

Oil that leaves in the underflow is oil you already paid to press.

  • Automated level and temperature control
  • Online VCT underflow oil losses monitoring
  • Automated oil skimming in VCT

Capabilities as printed // Smart Mill brochure 2026, p3 — and independently printed by The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026, which lists the same eight stations in the same order

1.4 Kernel Plant

The bunker and the silo report their own level and temperature.

  • Kernel bunker and kernel silo level monitoring
  • Temperature control
  • Remote monitoring via MyPalm

As printed // brochure p3

1.5 Boiler

The boiler and turbine report themselves, the fuel feed adjusts itself, and every asset carries a tag an engineer scans with a phone.

  • Real time boiler and turbine data monitoring
  • Auto boiler fuel control QR code based maintenance
  • Remote monitoring via MyPalm

As printed // brochure p3 — the QR-code maintenance line is the painted asset tag on the plant, read by phone

Three stainless crude-palm-oil storage tanks with dark navy skirts at the Minsawi mill — two in the foreground and a third set back between them, each with a railed walkway around its rim and a catwalk bridging them — framed by palm fronds, with a worker in a white hard hat walking past an occupational safety record board in the foreground.
CPO storage // the stock nobody watches at 3am

1.6 CPO Storage Tank

  • Automatic tankgauging system to monitor stock
  • Real-time notifications to detect unauthorized movements
  • Instant OER calculation using flowmeter

Capabilities as printed // Smart Mill brochure 2026, p3 — and independently printed by The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026, which lists the same eight stations in the same order

“Real-time notifications to detect unauthorized movements” is theft detection.

The tank measures its own level and raises an alarm when oil moves that nobody authorised. You find out the same night, not at the next stock take.

“Instant OER calculation using flowmeter” is knowing today, not yesterday.

Most mills work out their oil extraction rate afterwards, from the lab result and the day’s paperwork. A flowmeter at the tank gives you the number during the shift you are still standing in — the only version you can act on.

The MyPalmGPT chat window: an operator types "Please assist with press machine breakdown" and the assistant answers with a seven-point checklist beginning with checking the power supply to the press.
MyPalmGPT // real screen, press-breakdown query, 14:47 — and read the status honestly: The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026 describes AIREI as “pursuing MyPalmGPT features”, future tense. MyPalmGPT is a working feature, not yet a shipped module.

1.7 Data Room

  • Real-time reports
  • AI based decision making to ensure smooth process control
  • MyPalmGPT features to assist production and maintenance team
  • Integration between operation, finance, human resource and weighbridge data — The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026 renders this wider, naming “operations, maintenance, store, procurement finance, human resource and weighbridge data”.

Capabilities as printed // Smart Mill brochure 2026, p3 — and independently printed by The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026, which lists the same eight stations in the same order

MyPalmGPT: an assistant your production and maintenance teams can ask in plain language.

Named once, in one bullet, in one brochure — and nowhere else in AIREI’s material. The screen above is the real thing: a press-machine breakdown query answered as a checklist an engineer can work down, on the floor, at 14:47.

One caution, stated plainly.

Grading inside MyPalm Mill is manual data entry by a human grader, against the mill’s own standard. The unmanned vision rig that grades bunches without a person is separate hardware on its own line. The software does not do what the rig does.

What the instrumentation actually does

A compact process sensor clamped to a lagged pipe inside a mill, a short cable dropping away, condensation beading on the steel.

What comes out the far end

Crude palm oil, graded by colour and free fatty acid. Every control decision upstream is eventually an argument about this glass.

It does not stop at the dashboard.

Four steps, documented in AIREI’s own MyPalm Mill deck. Step 4 lands on the plant, not on a screen.

The control cycle  //  three quarters of it is sensing and deciding. Step 4 is amber because it lands on the plant, not on a screen — and the amber leg leaving it is the loop closing, carrying the correction straight back into step 1.
“Temperature (°C) is low. Please activate the steam actuator valve in auto mode.”
Press Station Abnormal ReportMyPalm Mill product deck — a Remarks cell, as printed

// That is not a dashboard telling you what happened. It names the deviation, names the valve, and names the mode to put it in — in the words a shift engineer already uses. The same report sets the thresholds that decide when the cell turns red. Ask us for the report and it comes to you in full.

  1. 1

    It measures

    Sensors on the sterilizer and the press read the fruit going in, with its grade coming straight off the weighbridge.

  2. 2

    It predicts

    It works out how much oil the press is losing — before the laboratory result comes back.

  3. 3

    It says why

    It names the reason and gives the correction that answers it.

  4. 4

    It acts

    It moves the steam flow and the oil drainage itself. Nobody has to be told first.

↩  and the next reading starts the loop again

An angled photograph of a control-room screen in the mill. A panel headed PRESS NO. 1 shows a status ring reading LOW, with rows labelled Time and Predicted Oil Loss in per cent, and a RECOMMENDATIONS band beneath them. The two live values beside those labels are blurred out. A second identical panel for the next press is visible alongside.
The prediction, on the plant  //  the screen names the press, states a predicted oil loss and a severity — step 2 of the loop above, photographed rather than drawn. What the recommendations underneath it say is set in words in the loop above. The two live readings are blurred — one press at one moment, with no reference method, sample or approver behind them.

This is closed-loop control, not analytics. Every competitor in the category sells a dashboard that tells a human what happened. This one moves the valve.

It also answers the question your board will ask: why is this a plant investment and not a software licence? Because the last step moves a valve.

The objection we agree with

“AI cannot rescue poor engineering.”

Joseph Tek Choon Yee — former president of the Malaysian Estate Owners’ Association and past chief executive of the Malaysian Palm Oil Association, writing in The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026.

In the same article he writes that the technology “is not yet the final answer to every milling challenge”. Both lines are correct, and both are the reason the sequence below runs in the order it does.

So nothing is quoted before a site assessment.

The eight stations are a menu against your plant, not a package. What a retrofit is worth depends on FFB quality, crop, mill condition and operating practice — which is why no figure is committed until the mill has been assessed on site.

Minsawi set the hard constraint: the mill could not be switched off. The work went in around a running plant, with only a seven-hour window on Sundays — the founder’s own account, quoted by The Edge Malaysia in an undated clipping reproduced on p16 of AIREI’s company profile. That is scheduling before it is technology.

An engineer in a hard hat and hi-vis vest walking the mill yard between the process house and the storage tanks.
On site, existing plant, mill running

Pull quote above: The Edge Malaysia, 25 May 2026. Install constraint: a separate report in the same paper, quoting AIREI chief executive Surendran Kuranadan, held as a press clipping in AIREI’s own company profile. That clipping carries no date; its own text places it after the November 2024 launch.

Next step

Book a site assessment.

An engineer walks your mill and tells you which of the eight stations are worth instrumenting on your plant — and which are not.

Book a site assessment See the grading rig

Or reach us directly

+603-8685 0888 info@airei.com.my Cyberjaya, Selangor