IOI Loders Croklaan Achieves 100 Percent Traceability for Its Directly-Sourced Palm Oil
IOI Loders Croklaan, a leading producer of palm-based fats and oils to the global food industry, has announced that 100 percent of its directly sourced palm oil worldwide is traceable to the mill level. Given the size and scale of IOI Loders Croklaan’s reach, this milestone will further advance sustainability and traceability within the palm industry while positively impacting the supply chains of the more than a thousand companies that purchase IOI Loders Croklaan products.
Directly-sourced oil constitutes 65 percent of IOI Loders Croklaan’s total volume sourced. Additionally, 84 percent of its indirectly sourced palm oil is now traceable to mill level, making IOI Loders Croklaan’s total supply 94 percent traceable to the mill level. IOI Loders Croklaan is working together with its third party suppliers to further increase the traceability number of the indirectly sourced palm oil up to 100 percent.
IOI Loders Croklaan is also now importing 38% of all its sourced palm oil volumes as sustainable, Segregated RSPO (SG RSPO) certified.
“Traceability to mill level is key to ensuring a transparent supply chain and is a critical step in transforming the industry,” says Ben Vreeburg, sustainability director at IOI Loders Croklaan. “Once we can trace the oil back to the supplying mill, we can start working with the mill to assess if the mill and its supply base are compliant to our Sustainable Palm Oil Policy. At mill level we can use our commercial leverage and drive change, through the mill, at the plantation level – the very base of our supply chain.”
Tracing palm oil to its source is the critical first step in IOI Loders Croklaan’s three-step approach to building a traceable, transparent and sustainable supply chain. After tracing the origin of the oil it sources, IOI Loders Croklaan uses remote sensing technology to analyze whether mills are operating in a low or high sensitive area. Based on this analysis the mills are prioritized for a field visit. The third step is to visit these high priority mills for an on-site mill verification to assess compliance with IOI Loders Croklaan’s sustainable palm oil policy. IOI Loders Croklaan has an in-house mill verification team and has also partnered with sustainable management experts Proforest to conduct these field visits.