by Sarah Hills FoodBizDaily.com London
March 18 2010 - Nestlé is pressuring its suppliers to provide sustainable palm oil as the company announced it has stopped sourcing palm oil from the Indonesian company Sinar Mas.
The Swiss food giant said it had replaced Sinar Mas as a supplier of palm oil with another supplier for further shipments, echoing similar moves by Unilever.
Unilever suspended purchases of palm oil from PT SMART, part of the Sinar Mas group, in December. It followed allegations by Greenpeace that Sinar Mas, Indonesia's biggest palm oil producer, had been responsible for widespread deforestation and peatland clearance.
Sinar Mas has denied accusations its activities were damaging the environment.
However, questions have been raised about Nestlé palm oil after it announced its commitment to using only "Certified Sustainable Palm Oil" by 2015, when sufficient quantities should be available.
Now Nestlé has issued a statement, saying: “We share the deep concern about the serious environmental threat to rainforests and peat fields in South East Asia caused by the planting of palm oil plantations.
“Because of our commitment, we are taking all feasible steps to impact our suppliers to assure that we don’t buy palm oil which contributes to deforestation.
“As a part of this commitment, we have accelerated the investigation of our palm oil supply chain to identify any palm oil source which does not meet our high standards for sustainability.”
Nestlé specified that it had only bought from Sinar Mas for manufacturing in Indonesia, and no palm oil bought from Sinar Mas had been used by Nestlé for manufacturing in any other country.
However, it added: “We have also joined other major purchasers of palm oil in making sure that companies, such as Cargill, understand our demands for palm oil which is not sourced from suppliers which destroy rainforests.
“At this point in time our suppliers of palm oil say they can’t currently guarantee that one particular company is excluded, due to the mingling of palm oil in a very complex supply chain.
“We will continue to pressure our suppliers to eliminate any sources of palm oil which are related to rainforest destruction and to provide valid guarantees of traceability as quickly as possible. We will not portray palm oil as free of such oils unless such guarantees are clear and reliable.”