Sustainable palm oil: Originally this issue was being driven by corporate affairs. Now, commercial people are involved
Finally, we met up with experts in Cargill's oils and shortenings division, which handles everything from tropical oils (palm) to vegetable oils (soy, canola, etc) and animal fats; and produces a range of products from bakery shortenings to frying oils, specialty coating fats, flakes, mayo and sauces.
On the nutritional front, efforts are ongoing to reduce saturated fat without losing functionality, while Cargill is also working on a cutting edge project with BASF to develop a genetically engineered plant-based source (canola) of EPA and DHA (the coveted long chain omega-3s currently only found in fish oil, krill and algae), that it hopes will be commercialized by 2018.
As for sustainable palm oil, while some major industry players have made very public commitments on this front, some of them have been pretty vague about how they plan to achieve their goals, said product line manager, tropical oils, Mohit Gupta
“Are they going to have fully traceable physical sustainable palm oil in all their products by 2015, or are they going to go out and buy a bunch of GreenPalm certificates on December 31, 2014?”
The low hanging fruit has been captured
On the plus side, he said, many firms have now moved beyond the education and awareness stage to the more challenging ‘what do we do about it in practice?’ phase.
“Originally this issue was being driven by the corporate affairs people. Now, the commercial people are involved.”
But cost remains a major hurdle, he said, as palm oil is co-mingled at every stage of the supply chain, making it very challenging to supply fully traceable, certified sustainable products - especially fractions - that have been segregated throughout the supply chain - at an affordable price.
As a result, most people are still relying on mass balance options (click here) or buying GreenPalm certificates (click here) to cover their palm oil use.
GreenPalm is a great interim measure designed to address the issue at source by incentivizing so many plantations to get certified to sustainable standards that there will eventually be a critical mass such that segregation downstream won’t be necessary, as all palm oil would be sustainable, he said.
In reality, however, the certificates are not trading at a high enough premium to incentivize growers to get certified, he said.
“I think that the low hanging fruit has been captured and people are realizing that there needs to be more alignment in industry, with companies such as Cargill trying to map their supply chains and establish exactly where our oil is coming from and then work with all the suppliers along that chain to find solutions.”