Where does GreenPalm fit into your sustainable palm oil strategy?
Right now, food manufacturers have three options when it comes to sustainable palm oil, GreenPalm general manager Bob Norman told us.
Segregated: If you want to use the RSPO trademark and claim ‘This product contains certified sustainable palm oil’, you must use palm oil that has been segregated throughout the supply chain and is traceable directly back to its RSPO-certified source.
While this is the preferred option for many, it's very costly if you are looking for more complex palm fractions and derivatives, especially palm kernel oil, says Norman. "And that's if you can get hold of them at all."
Mass balance: This combines some segregated RSPO certified oil and some standard oil, and allows users to use the RSPO trademark (‘Mixed’) and claim: ‘Contributes to the production of certified sustainable palm oil’.
GreenPalm (book and claim): Buyers of GreenPalm certificates are guaranteed that a tonnage of palm oil/derivatives equivalent to the tonnage they use has been produced from RSPO-certified plantations. While you can't guarantee the actual oil you are buying is sustainable, you know the amount you use has been produced sustainably. Participants can use the GreenPalm logo and claim: ‘Supports the production of RSPO-certified sustainable palm oil’.
While there are some vertically integrated players such as New Britain Palm Oil that source palm oil from company-owned plantations in Papua New Guinea, most palm oil production is in Malaysia and Indonesia and growers there that don't have direct connections to refineries need an incentive to get RSPO certified he says.
"And at the moment I think that GreenPalm is the most efficient route for doing that."
Asked whether the trading price of GreenPalm certificates (currently around $2.40/t) is sufficiently attractive to encourage growers to get RSPO certified, he says that the important thing is that the price is going up - so the trajectory is in the right direction. Meanwhile, if you are generating a reasonable tonnage, and extra $2.40 a ton is not to be sniffed at, he says.
Click here to read our recent interview with the WWF on palm oil.