Bulk Red Palm Oil

Unrefined palm oil with its natural color and flavor

Bulk red palm oil is palm oil in its traditional, unrefined form. It is pressed from the orange flesh of the oil palm fruit and keeps everything refining removes: its deep orange-red color, its rich, distinctive flavor and its natural carotenes and vitamin E. For millions of cooks across West and Central Africa, Brazil and the diaspora, it is not just a cooking fat but the essential flavor of the dish.

Our red palm oil is milled near the plantations, then clarified, filtered, tested and packed in the United States, and supplied from 1-liter bottles to 20,000-liter flexitanks for food manufacturers, importers, distributors and ethnic food retailers.

Red palm oil, RBD palm oil and palm olein compared

All three come from the same fruit, but they are very different products. Red palm oil is unrefined. RBD palm oil has been refined, bleached and deodorized, which removes the color, flavor and carotenes. Palm olein is the liquid fraction of RBD palm oil, used as a frying oil.

What makes red palm oil different

• Natural carotenes. The red color comes from carotenoids, mainly beta-carotene and alpha-carotene, which the body can convert into vitamin A. Unbleached palm oil typically contains 500–2,000 mg/kg of carotenoids.
• Vitamin E as tocotrienols. Palm oil is one of the few common oils whose vitamin E is mostly tocotrienols rather than tocopherols.
• Distinctive flavor. It has a rich, savory, slightly earthy taste that is central to many traditional recipes.
• Semi-solid at room temperature. Like all palm oil, it is about half saturated fat, so it thickens or sets in cooler weather and melts easily when warmed.

How red palm oil is used

Red palm oil is a staple of West African cooking, where it flavors soups, stews, sauces and beans, and of Bahian cuisine in Brazil, where it is known as dendê oil and gives dishes such as moqueca and vatapá their color and taste. It is used for sautéing and frying, stirred into stews at the end of cooking, and blended with neutral oils when cooks want its color and flavor at lower cost. Because heat gradually breaks down its carotenes, it is best used for stewing and moderate-heat cooking rather than long, high-temperature deep frying; for that, choose palm olein.

How bulk red palm oil is priced

Red palm oil prices follow palm harvests and global vegetable oil markets. We price each order on grade, pack size, total volume and destination, and larger formats cost less per liter. The minimum is 1,000 liters per quote, and you can combine red palm oil with any of our other oils.