RSPO’s Certified Sustainable Palm Oil hits record sales for Q1 2014

Kuala Lumpur, April 8, 2014 – Sales of Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) for the first quarter ending March 31, 2014 (Q12014), has hit a new high, with a 49% increase for physical uptake of RSPO CSPO and a 54% increase for GreenPalm Certificates, compared with Q12013. 

According to the latest data from the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), sales of Physical CSPO reported in the eTrace system through Identity Preserved (IP), Segregated (SG) and Mass Balance (MB) supply chains have increased to 506,586 Metric Tonnes (MT) in the first quarter ending March 31, 2014, compared with 340,668 MT in the same period last year. 

Meanwhile, GreenPalm Certificates clocked in sales of 853,338 MT for the first quarter of the year, up 54% from 555,906 MT in the same period last year. GreenPalm trading during the month of March has also resulted in a record of total premiums back to RSPO certified growers of US$6.6 million.

RSPO Technical Director Salahudin Yaacob said: “The recent months have seen many more companies committing towards 100% RSPO Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO), most of them with a 2015 deadline. We are happy to see these commitments – mainly from large European Retailers and Consumer Goods Companies) reflecting in real terms on the demand for CSPO”. 

GreenPalm’s General Manager, Bob Norman, commented: “This record trade marks an important landmark for GreenPalm and affirms the programme’s role as a facilitator for change within the palm oil industry. This is particularly important for independent smallholders, who rarely have direct access to large multinational buyers committed to sustainable palm oil, selling instead to their local mill”

UTZ Certified Executive Director, Han de Groot said: “The topics of transparency, disclosure, clarity and efficiency in the physical trading of CSPO and its fractions along the supply chain are increasingly important for all stakeholders and thus for effective sector change. We are proud to contribute to that through our traceability system. It is heartening to see RSPO members play a key role in ensuring major achievements by contributing to this increase in sales for Physical CSPO.”

NOTES TO EDITOR:

16% of world's palm oil production is now RSPO certified

The current estimated annual production capacity of RSPO-certified sustainable palm oil is 9.7 million metric tons, approximately 16 percent of global crude palm oil. Spread over 1.97 million hectares of certified production area,  about 47.85% of the world's current RSPO-certified sustainable palm oil production capacity comes from Indonesia, followed by 43.95% from Malaysia, and the remaining 8.2% from Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Brazil, Thailand, Colombia, Cambodia and Ivory Coast.

About RSPO

In response to the urgent and pressing global call for sustainably-produced palm oil, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was formed in 2004 with the objective of promoting the growth and use of sustainable oil palm products through credible global standards and engagement of stakeholders. The seat of the association is in Zurich, Switzerland, while the secretariat is currently based in Kuala Lumpur with a satellite office in Jakarta.

RSPO is a not-for-profit association that unites stakeholders from seven sectors of the palm oil industry – oil palm producers, palm oil processors or traders, consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, banks and investors, environmental or nature conservation NGOs and social or developmental NGOs – to develop and implement global standards for sustainable palm oil.

Such multi-stakeholder representation is mirrored in the governance structure of RSPO such that seats in the Executive Board and project-level Working Groups are fairly allocated to each sector. In this way, RSPO lives out the philosophy of the "roundtable" by giving equal rights to each stakeholder group to bring group-specific agendas to the roundtable, facilitating traditionally adversarial stakeholders and business competitors to work together towards a common objective and make decisions by consensus.

Contact for RSPO Secretariat: 

Ravin Trapshah Ismail

Member Relations Manager

T: +603-2302 1500 ext 102

Email  

Stefano Savi

Communications Manager

T: +603-2302 1500 ext 107

Email

About GreenPalm

As of 1 January 2017, the RSPO no longer endorses GreenPalm as the service provider for the trade in Book and Claim certificates. From this date, RSPO-certified volumes can be sold via Credits on the RSPO PalmTrace platform.

About UTZ Certified

UTZ Certified develops sustainable supply chains for agricultural products that are credible from producer to manufacturer, working together with existing brands that need raw materials on a large scale. This way we are able to raise the standard of living of a large number of farming communities. In order to determine if producers are farming sustainably, a clear standard needs to be in place. To administer the sustainability claim of the end product all administration is controlled through the traceability system. To make sure transactions entered by the members in the traceability system are correct, audits must be performed on a regular basis.

In November 2007 RSPO contracted UTZ Certified as its provider for traceability services, related to the supply chain of RSPO Certified Palm Oil. A web-based IT system developed and serviced by UTZ Certified allows RSPO and its members to follow and report on the uptake of CSPO in the global market place. The data in the system are registered by parties in the palm oil supply chain, who log all their physical trading activities in the system.

For further information about UTZ Certified:

Web: www.utzcertified.org

Email