Semarang – PT Bumitama Gunajaya Agro (BGA) collaborated with the Faculty of Science and Mathematics (FSM) in organizing socialization and sharing related to the Call for Proposal: Open Innovation BGA 2025 through the Zoom platform on February 18, 2025. The event presented the main speaker Muhammad Kalili as the Corporate Development of PT BGA’s Innovation Division and was moderated by Alan Prahutama, S.Si., M.Si., Ph.D, lecturer at the Department of Statistics.
Deputy Dean for Resources Dr. Eng. Adi Wibowo, S.Si., M.Kom gave a speech by explaining the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration between lecturers, students, and various elements of FSM in supporting the development of innovation at PT BGA. Hopefully, this collaboration can run sustainably, not only in 2025.
PT BGA is very open to communication and cooperation to support the sustainability of the palm oil industry. In the main session, Muhammad Kalili explained the current condition of oil palm plantations at BGA as well as the technical aspects and implementation of Open Innovation 2025. One of the main focuses in this innovation is increasing oil content with various approaches, including metabolite engineering, increasing the number of pollinator insects, and artificial pollination.
PT BGA also explained the various challenges faced by the palm oil industry today, such as increasing the productivity of Fresh Fruit Bunches (FFB) and Crude Palm Oil (CPO). To answer these challenges, Open Innovation 2025 will look for innovative solutions that can be applied in the palm oil plantation sector.
In Open Innovation 2025, innovators can submit proposals through PT BGA’s innovation platform. The selection process includes administration, presentation, and project evaluation stages. Successful proposals will receive grants with a staged funding scheme. Students can submit proposals with a maximum funding of Rp300 million, while lecturers and researchers get a maximum grant of Rp10 million per proposal.
The proposal selection criteria include the impact on solving problems in BGA (50%), the level of technology readiness (25%), budget feasibility with the proposed program (15%), and application feasibility and scalability (10%).
With this program, PT BGA and FSM hope to attract the best innovations that can directly contribute to improving the efficiency and sustainability of the palm oil industry in Indonesia.
[Public Relations]