Greenpeace’s most recent report into the IOI Group, ‘A Deadly Trade-Off’, found that IOI had been supplying the global market with palm oil from third party palm oil suppliers linked to human rights abuses, deforestation and peatland degradation.

IOI’s initial response to A Deadly Trade-Off was a weak call for collective industry discussions and contained no commitment to cancel trade deals with dirty palm oil suppliers identified in Greenpeace’s investigations. (See our response for more information.)

IOI has now updated that response. Although more detailed, this falls short and shows the company still does not understand what it means to be a responsible trader and producer.If IOI were serious about supplying the market with ‘no deforestation’ palm oil, it would have already identified that these producers were in violation of its policies and excluded their oil from its supply chain. It knew that its oil was coming from the producers named in our report because they were listed in its mills database. As our evidence was drawn from reports and information already in the public domain, IOI has no excuse for not knowing what these companies were up to – or taking appropriate action.Instead, it is using the complexity of its own supply chain as an excuse to blame other companies for its own failings. This is just passing the buck.

IOI claims to have been aware of problems associated with the one company, TH Plantations, with which it deals with directly – but made no efforts to exclude this supplier until Greenpeace exposed the scandal.

IOI is not only responsible for its own plantation operations; it also needs to take responsibility for the actions of the producers whose oil it is trading, regardless of how their oil enters its supply chain. That means leading by example and immediately:

  • Cutting contracts with the companies named in our most recent report
  • Resolving outstanding social conflicts
  • Imposing a moratorium on all new plantation development across its supply chain until its suppliers’ compliance can be verified by independent auditors
  • Driving full transparency amongst its suppliers by requiring them to publish land use maps in a standard digital format to enable analysis, monitoring and compliance checks
  • Engaging other stakeholders in the plantation sector to share and use these tools and standards
  • Proactively monitoring suppliers to check compliance and establish a clear, time-bound route for excluding rogue companies

Media contacts:
Annisa Rahmawati, Forest Campaigner, Greenpeace Indonesia
E: [email protected], M: +62 8111097527

Sol Gosetti, International Communications Coordinator, Indonesia Forest campaign,

E: [email protected], M: +44 7380845754