ABSTRACT
In the mid-1950s it could hardly have been predicted that United Plantations would soon rise to fame as an oil palm innovator. The company was a mature player in the Malaysian industry, and the Copenhagen directors’ more experimental investments lay elsewhere. Yet United Plantations’ oil palm holdings were completely rejuvenated in the 1960s and have continued being renewed ever since. Alongside the Tenera replanting programme came a long series of innovative engineering and marketing developments, bringing the firm a leadingedge reputation world-wide. Olof Grut backed these developments to the hilt, but their practical success was largely due to one man: Børge Bek-Nielsen, who joined the company as an assistant engineer in 1951.
