Certified Sustainable Palm Oil sales continue to rise

Sales of Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) for the first quarter ending March 31, 2014 (Q12014),…

Sales of Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) for the first quarter ending March 31, 2014 (Q12014), have 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, said RSPO, 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.

“The recent months have seen many more companies committing towards 100% RSPO Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO), most of them with a 2015 deadline,” said RSPO technical director Salahudin Yaacob. “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”.

“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,” said GreenPalm’s general manager, Bob Norman. “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 mil.”

“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,” said UTZ Certified executive director, Han de Groot. “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.”

According to RSPO, 16% of the 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. 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.