THE MACHATE FAMILY OBTAINED THE PATENT

The patent “METHOD FOR THE RETARDATION OF PALM TREE SAP FERMENTATION”
was granted in December 2021.

THE CONVENTIONAL METHOD

For many centuries, farmers, agricultural cooperatives, associations, universities, and coconut sugar producers have been struggling to find a healthy method for overcoming the main problem of coconut sap fermentation during collection, transportation and storage.

Most of the methods developed to inhibit sap fermentation without the application of preservatives failed because they were either labor-intensive, not practical, or too expensive to implement on a continuous basis.

Today, farmers are therefore still using preservatives in the form of chemicals (alkalines), which are the simplest and cheapest version of inhibiting the fermentation, which however deteriorate the physical and chemical properties of the sap, including its nutrients as well as its aroma and taste, and therefore overall the quality of the end-product, i.e. coconut sugar.

In the Phillippines, companies are using an expensive resource-intensive method that requires workers to climb the coconut trees every 4 hours on average to harvest the sap before it ferments; such a method also limits the production volume of coconut sugar to a certain extent.

THE STORY OF THE REVOLUTIONARY METHOD

Things fortunately started to change in the year 2015, when the former national athlete and health-conscious engineer and businessman in the field of electrical, mechanical and chemical processes, Dieter Machate, together with his daughter, Natasha Machate, an expert in biological chemistry, commenced a project to study the behavior and activities of micro-organisms found in freshly collected phloem exudates (“sap”) of palm trees.

The main objective of this project was to find and develop a method targeting the deactivation of microorganisms causing fermentation. The project was undertaken with phloem exudates originated from coconut and arenga trees naturally grown in the area of Pangandaran, a sub-province of West Java, Indonesia.

After three years of research and trials, the Machate Family finally succeeded in inventing and developing a revolutionary, simple, but effective preservative-free method for delaying the natural process of sap fermentation caused by microorganisms. The patent application was filed in January 2018 with the patent offices in Indonesia and the Philippines.