Responsibly sourced palm oil

Palm oil is a cost-competitive, versatile and widely produced vegetable oil. When produced responsibly, it can support millions of livelihoods and reduce pressure on forests and sensitive ecosystems.

We use palm oil as an ingredient in a number of Nestlé products. To address sustainability challenges in our palm oil supply chains, we start by understanding where the palm oil comes from and how it is produced. We buy from processing companies that source palm oil in Malaysia, Indonesia, Latin America and West Africa. And we work with expert organizations and the industry to continually improve environmental and social practices.

Our approach to sourcing palm oil that is sustainable and deforestation-free

We work with our suppliers and partners to continuously improve the sustainability practices of our upstream supply chain for palm oil, including assessing and addressing deforestation risks.

For the last 10 years, we have been using a combination of tools, including supply chain mapping, certification, satellite monitoring and on-the-ground assessments, to assess and address deforestation risks in our supply chains and improve our understanding of human rights and land rights risks. The results help us identify landscape-level initiatives that can be duplicated for other raw materials.

We remain committed to sourcing 100% Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certified supplies, even if there is a large market supply shortage on RSPO -certified palm kernel oil. We are working with industry bodies to demonstrate, regardless of this market situation, our commitment to achieving 100% certified sustainable palm oil sourced by 2023.

Working towards deforestation-free supply chains is the foundation of our Forest Positive strategy - which aims to target a positive impact on our broader sourcing landscapes. This will contribute to delivering our Net Zero Roadmap (pdf, 8Mb). Of all our key ingredients, our palm oil supply chain presents the greatest opportunity to improve its sustainable credentials, with 95.6% of our volumes assessed as deforestation-free in 2022. From experience, we know that the last percentage points are the hardest to reach due to the volume sourced from thousands of smallholders who require customized technical assistance at a local level.

Our palm oil team has mapped sourcing regions with the greatest land rights risks against volumes of palm oil sourced from those regions. This will improve our understanding of land rights risks. The results are being used to develop a strategy for identifying landscape-level projects that Nestlé can support and/or participate in and can be duplicated for other raw materials.

Pioneering satellite monitoring technology

We partnered with Airbus and Earthworm Foundation to implement Starling, a satellite-based service to monitor 100% of our global palm oil supply chains. Starling provides highly detailed optical and radar images of land across huge areas. We monitor over 9000 farm boundaries, as well as the area surrounding more than 1700 mills, to determine whether origins are verifiably deforestation-free and whether further supplier engagement and investigation are needed.

Using data gathered through Starling, we have created a palm oil transparency dashboard to update stakeholders on our progress in achieving deforestation-free palm oil, and to share our learnings.

Using landscape approaches to address root causes

Sustainable production cannot be achieved through action only within the sites in our supply chain. We aim to address sustainability challenges and opportunities at the landscape level and view the farms, communities, and processing facilities that are connected to our supply chain as an integrated part of that broader landscape. To that end, we are increasing our focus on ‘landscape initiatives’, meaning integrated, multi-stakeholder efforts that work across industries at a jurisdictional level to address the root causes of the issues we work to address.

To take just two examples: in Malaysia we work alongside the Earthworm Foundation to support landscape initiatives such as in Sabah in northern Borneo, which supplied 6.2% of the world’s palm oil in 2020. Together, we hope to show smallholder farmers what’s possible when we combine sustainable economic development, forest conservation, decent work opportunities and resilient livelihoods for communities.

In Mexico, the Mexico Palm Oil Holistic Program is a collaborative effort between Nestlé, PepsiCo, Oleopalma, RSPO , Proforest, and Femexpalma to support the sustainable development of the Mexican palm oil sector. This program was launched in 2017, and Nestlé joined in 2018 with the objective of increasing smallholders’ resilience to market changes and developing new tools that will help conserve forests while improving livelihoods. The program’s goals are to help drive sustainability in the Mexican palm oil sector, build the business case for including smallholders in responsible supply chains, and implement best practices to help prevent deforestation and human rights risks.

Supporting Conservation and Restoration

In addition to addressing deforestation risks, we also support the conservation and restoration of forests and other important ecosystems. In 2021, we scaled up our investment for conservation and restoration around our palm oil supply chain. These initiatives embrace new models of conservation financing, collaboration, and action to drive positive impacts for people, climate and nature.

In 2020, Nestlé Malaysia announced a commitment to plant three million trees over the next three years under Project RELeaf, a reforestation initiative in palm oil producing landscapes in Sabah and Peninsular Malaysia. The focus will be to restore riparian zones and forest ecosystems. The aim is to contribute to establishing wildlife corridors and mitigating human-animal conflict, and to protect critical water supplies. Planting is being accelerated after delays due to COVID-19 movement restrictions.

Continuing to improve sustainability practices

We work together with our direct suppliers to continuously improve the sustainability practices of our upstream supply chain, all the way up to smallholder farmers. We also work with partners to conduct supplier assessments and identify gaps. This informs the development of action plans with defined milestones and deadlines to act upon risks and identified opportunities for improvement.

When a supplier fails to effectively manage identified risks or meet agreed deadlines, we take decisive action. To provide assurance of this, we have removed the following 19 upstream supply chain companies from the Nestlé supply chain since 2018.

Providing supply chain disclosure

Of the palm oil we source, 96% is traceable to the mill. However, assessing and monitoring conditions on the ground requires us to go further upstream, which is why we are also focusing on increasing traceability to individual plantation. In 2021, we achieved 68% of traceability to plantation. To hold our suppliers and ourselves accountable and drive industry-wide transparency, we have published a list of our Tier 1 palm oil suppliers, (pdf, 4Mb), their country of origin and the mills in our supply chain.

Protecting the livelihoods and human rights of workers and children

Assessing the challenges

Nestlé has been working for many years to prevent and remediate human rights violations in its palm oil supply chain and has gained a much better understanding about the root causes of the problem. As part of our palm oil labor action plan, (pdf, 400Kb), Nestlé developed a framework to help prioritize supplier engagement and systematically take action based on suppliers' risk profile and their capacity to address labor rights issues. Under the framework, we are working with external partners to develop corrective action plans for suppliers and put monitoring systems in place to track against a set of key performance indicators.

Giving workers a voice

In 2018, we partnered with our supplier, Sime Darby Plantation, to create a helpline for palm oil workers in Malaysia to report human and labor rights abuses. This third-party worker support line enables workers to safely report on working conditions, recruitment, safety and other rights abuses. Helpline coverage was extended in 2021 to cover all Sime Darby Plantations operations, or about 35 000 workers. More than 4500 workers have participated in in-person training, and many more have received informational posters, videos, and other forms of outreach.

Responsible recruitment

Nestlé has supported several key initiatives to promote responsible recruitment, including funding the development of a human rights-based due diligence tool that supports palm oil producers in establishing transparency in their recruitment practices and identifying risks. A performance matrix allows suppliers to track and measure progress in their recruitment practices.

We have also invested in training assessors to identify forced labor risks associated with migrant workers’ recruitment, as well as supporting research (conducted by Earthworm) into recruitment practices and costs among small and medium-sized third-party suppliers.

Supporting children living on plantations

The presence of children on plantations is a risk in some parts of our palm oil supply chains. Thousands of children may live on palm oil plantations, often undocumented and without access to basic services such as education and schooling. Working with Earthworm, a Child Risk Assessment Framework has been developed to support palm grower companies. The Framework covers topics such as education, childcare, maternity protection, healthcare, nutrition, birth registration and child sexual exploitation prevention. A training model on the use of the Framework has also been developed and rolled out.

Wilmar Child Protection Policy 

We continue to support a program developed by our supplier Wilmar to protect children living on plantations, in collaboration with Business for Social Responsibility. It included holding a series of stakeholder consultation workshops on Implementing Wilmar’s Child Protection Policy (pdf, 3Mb) for Indonesian plantation companies, government representatives, trade unions and industry associations. Following the workshops, Wilmar published its Child Protection Policy Implementation Manual which is being further refined for potential use outside of Wilmar’s supplier base.

Multi-stakeholder engagements

To address key challenges in our palm oil supply chains, we cannot work alone. We collaborate with various industry partners to develop action plans, define milestones, and achieve lasting change. In East Kalimantan, Indonesia, we support Earthworm in its multi-stakeholder engagements with the government and suppliers on two themes: children on plantations and fair employment for casual workers. These consultations included a workshop for 54 representatives from palm oil companies, the government, civil society organizations and labor unions.