Smoother plantations from the air, SD Guthrie’s drone spraying service quietly scales up

Reviewed: ad hoc news Software & Services desk. Edited and checked on 2026-06-18, 20:31. Details in the imprint.

With the SD Guthrie drone spraying service, the sound of low-flying rotors is slowly replacing tractor engines over parts of the company’s oil palm estates. Crews stand at the block edge with tablets in hand, sending compact quadcopters on neat, GPS-guided runs over the palms.

What the service offers

SD Guthrie highlights drones as part of a broader precision agriculture push, alongside satellite analytics and digital field tools in its plantations segment worldwide strategy. The company presents mechanisation and digitalisation as levers to cut labour intensity and improve consistency in spraying tasks.

In practice, the drone spraying service is used mainly for herbicide and foliar applications over oil palm blocks. Operators can predefine flight paths and spray volumes, which helps reduce overlaps and missed strips compared with manual knapsack work on uneven terrain.

How a spraying day feels

A typical run starts at first light before the heat builds. The drone crew unloads folding multirotor units from a pickup, checks batteries and nozzles, then calibrates the tanks with the required agrochemical mix according to the day’s block schedule.

Once airborne, the drone moves in straight, low passes above the palm rows, emitting a steady spray pattern that is surprisingly quiet from a distance. Supervisors can watch the route on a tablet map, adjust speed, or pause spraying when approaching sensitive buffer zones or waterways.

Efficiency and cost angles

Management has pointed out that mechanisation and technology adoption are meant to improve both yields and cost per hectare over time, a key focus after the 2019 business rationalisation that shaped SD Guthrie’s current plantation profile. Drones fit into this narrative as a flexible way to cover labour-scarce or hard-to-access areas.

For estates with labour constraints, a drone crew can treat a significant area in one shift, especially on younger plantings where ground access is easier. The biggest cost blocks are usually batteries, maintenance and pilot training rather than the chemicals themselves.

Where drones still meet limits

The drone spraying service does not fully replace ground crews. In dense, older palms with irregular topography, line of sight and GPS reliability can suffer, and manual operators are often still faster for spot treatments or undergrowth clearing.

Weather is another hard limit. Strong wind or heavy tropical rain quickly grounds the hardware, forcing estates back to conventional methods. For now, most plantations use drones as a complement, not a single solution.

Digital integration on the estate

SD Guthrie’s sustainability and annual reports repeatedly reference digital tools, such as data platforms to monitor productivity and field activities across its Malaysian and Indonesian estates. Drone operations can plug into that framework by feeding coverage logs and treated-area data into central dashboards.

Over time, this integration could allow managers to compare chemical usage per hectare, link it to satellite imagery, and tighten application regimes. That is the quiet but important promise behind what looks, from the roadside, like a single drone humming over palms.

Context and stock reference

SD Guthrie Bhd positions drone spraying within a broader shift toward sustainable, high-technology plantation management, after years of portfolio reshaping and rebranding from the former Sime Darby Plantation structure. Shares of SD Guthrie Bhd (MYL5285OO001) trade in Kuala Lumpur on Bursa Malaysia in Malaysian ringgit.

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