FOR THE FIRST time, demand for Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) is rising faster than supply as sales reach more than 2.4 million metric tonnes.
New data by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) revealed a record high in sales of CSPO for the first half of 2014 with total sales increasing by 48.8%.
RSPO Secretary General Darrel Webber commented: “This is good news for certified growers who will now get more return on investment for their sustainable practices. The key to making the whole palm oil industry sustainable is to share responsibility between palm oil producer and consumer markets.”
This is the first time that CSPO sales have grown faster than supply, which increased by 29% over the first two quarters of 2014 compared with the same period last year.
The low level of CSPO uptake has been a long-standing challenge for RSPO and its members and remains a major source of concern. At its recent European Roundtable event in London, entitled “100% CSPO: Our Shared Responsibility”, RSPO called on its supply chain members to support certified growers by purchasing more CSPO.
Talking to Food Navigator, Stefano Savi, communications director at RSPO said: “The current CSPO production is still higher than the amount bought by the market, leading to certified producers not to be able to be rewarded for their efforts”.
“By eliminating palm oil from the equation, demand would shift to other vegetable oils. It will lead to more deforestation because compared to other crops, like soy bean, sunflower or rapeseed, oil palms produce the greatest amount of vegetable oil per hectare of land (4-10 times more)”.
RSPO is a not-for-profit association that unites stakeholders from seven sectors of the palm oil industry – oil palm producers, palm oil processors or traders, consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, banks and investors, environmental or nature conservation NGOs and social or developmental NGOs – to develop and implement global standards for sustainable palm oil.