Consumer goods giant Unilever PLC said on Friday it had laid bare its entire palm oil supply chain, including all the suppliers and mills it sources from, to boost transparency in a rare industry move.
Unilever said it was the first consumers goods company to publish such details, having disclosed the location of more than 1,400 mills and over 300 direct suppliers of the oil used in products from snacks and soaps to cosmetics and biofuels.
The US$62 billion palm oil industry has been plagued by concerns about deforestation and human rights abuses in countries such as Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer.
Unilever chief supply chain officer Marc Engel said the company hoped sharing the information would be the start of a new industry-wide movement toward supply chain transparency.
“Unilever believes that complete transparency is needed for radical transformation,” Engel said in a statement posted on Unilever’s Web site. “This is a big step towards greater transparency, but we know there is more work to be done to achieve a truly sustainable palm oil industry and we will continue our efforts to make this a reality.”
Unilever said transparency and the ability to trace palm oil are vital in addressing deforestation and human rights abuses.
Palm oil supply chains are complex as the fruit changes hands many times from farmers to agents before it reaches a mill. It is then transported via traders to refineries for further processing, when it enters a company’s supply chain.
Over the past decade, consumer activist groups have pressed big palm oil buyers such as PepsiCo Inc, Unilever and Nestle SA with supermarket boycotts and other protests over palm oil’s perceived links to deforestation and human rights abuses.
PepsiCo last month suspended procurement from a palm oil supplier over claims of labor abuses on its Indonesian plantations.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS