PALMING OFF RESPONSIBILITY

Consumer goods giants including PepsiCo, Unilever and Nestle have been accused of indirectly sourcing palm oil from a mill supplied by a producer which destroyed almost 3,000 hectares of forest in Indonesia in the first half of 2020.

In its latest analysis of palm-oil-driven deforestation, sustainability risk analysis organisation Chain Reaction Research (CRR) tracked the activity of key producers in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea using satellite imagery. It found that just ten palm oil groups were behind more than half of the 19,894 hectares of nature destruction recorded in these regions in the first half of 2020.

The worst single offender was found to be Sulaidy, which has eight concessions in Kalimantan, Borneo. Collectively, these concessions cleared forest from around 2,900 hectares between January and June, CRR believes.

While no consumer goods firms with deforestation-free, peat-free and exploitation-free (NPDE) palm oil commitments were found to be sourcing directly from Sulaidy subsidies, one of Sulaidy’s plantation companies, PT Palmdale Agrosia Lestari, told CRR that it was delivering fresh fruit bunches to a mill operated by PT Pundi Lahan Khatulistiwa. According to CRR, that mill has contracts with Avon, Danone, Kellogg Company, L’Oreal, Mondelez, PepsiCo, Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser (RB) - 

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