Palm oil producer Olam International has defended the sustainability of its operations after being accused of “putting forests in Southeast Asia and Gabon at risk”.
A report by Mighty, a US-based environmental lobby group and Brainforest, a Gabonese NGO, claimed Olam had put forests in danger and had failed to publicly disclose the names of suppliers and their performance on sustainability, despite making recent commitments on the matter.
Olam processes some 2.5% of global palm oil, according to the report, and supplies brands including PepsiCo, KraftHeinz, Unilever, Mondelez and Nestlé.
“This supplier of many of the world’s internationally recognised brands is keeping its sources secret, embracing shoddy plantations standards, violating a group-wide commitment to the Forest Stewardship Council to avoid deforestation and is threatening large swathes of tropical forests in what is slated to become Africa’s biggest palm oil plantation,” said the report.
However, the producer defended its standards and said it sourced from suppliers who were required to abide by its sustainable palm oil policy, and would “not tolerate the burning of forests” from its third-party suppliers, the majority of which come from Indonesia.
Olam also defended its Gabon plantation, which in October was certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).
“Olam’s palm plantations in Gabon are being developed in an environmentally and socially responsible way,” said Sunny Verghese, co-founder and group CEO of Olam International. “In fact, we are conserving and protecting areas of verified high-conservation value forest within our concessions greater in size than our plantations.”
The producer said it would take on board some of the recommendations made in the report. However, Olam said it would not sign a no-deforestation commitment due to the land available in Gabon.
“Given much of Gabon’s non-forested land is infertile savannah or swamps, there simply isn’t enough available non-forested land to start up such development,” said a spokeswoman from Olam. “It is therefore necessary to include some highly degraded forest lands. Therefore, Olam cannot sign up to the no-deforestation commitments that adhere to the HCSA approach on the basis of available land in Gabon.”
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