Damar & Co is a bulk cooking-oil (palm oil) repacking and trading venture operating in Indonesia, with funding raised in Malaysian Ringgit. The business model is deliberately simple and high-velocity: buy refined palm cooking oil in bulk from storage, repack it into retail bottles, sell to wholesale buyers and customers, collect payment, and repeat the cycle — typically on a weekly basis.
The opportunity
Each litre is bought at Rp 17,250 and sold at Rp 19,450, a gross spread of Rp 2,200/litre. After transport, insurance and tax (Rp 550) the FOB margin is Rp 1,650; after the operating costs of repacking — rental, manpower, machine and material (Rp 660) — the venture nets Rp 990 per litre (~5.7% on cost). At the standard minimum order of 500,000 litres, that is roughly Rp 1.1 bn gross / Rp 495 mn net per batch. Because the buy→sell→collect cycle is short, the same working capital can be turned over repeatedly within a month, compounding the return.
Set-up & budget
The repacking line — stainless and IBC tanks, filtration, piping, filling / pumping / heating / sealing / mixing machines, plus permanent permits (perizinan) — costs about Rp 655.5 mn in CAPEX. A first full material batch (oil, bottles, cartons, labels, labour, electricity) adds about Rp 484.6 mn in OPEX, for a total stand-up budget of Rp 1.14 bn. Notably, the smallest capital tier (RM 300k ≈ Rp 1.29 bn at Rp 4,300/RM) covers this entire build-out with a small contingency to spare.
Funding structure
Capital is provided by an investor across four scenarios — RM 300k, 600k, 900k and 1.8 mn. A mobilization cost is drawn upfront and held as reserve, the balance is deployed as working capital, and the investor is repaid principal plus a fixed return at the chosen exit point. Returns scale with holding period at roughly 1.5%/month plus a 2% p.a. cost-of-funds, giving a clean ladder of 5% / 10% / 15% / 20% for exits at month 3, 6, 9 and 12. The investor's return is fixed regardless of trading performance; all upside (and downside) accrues to the operator.
What this model does
This tool runs a month-by-month projection for each capital tier and exit point. It ties out directly to the three source documents — the operational flow chart, the OPEX/CAPEX budget (FM_bulk.pdf) and the per-litre unit economics (fm_units.xlsx) — and lets every assumption be flexed live. Net profitability targets of 10 / 20 / 30 / 40% across the four tiers serve as directional guides. The single biggest driver of returns is inventory turns per month: at a conservative 1× the smaller tiers are thin, but at the weekly cycle the flow chart implies (~4×) all tiers clear their targets comfortably.