Unilever palm oil supplier must suspend all plantation expansion to save reputation

As buyers such as Unilever and Mars stop doing business with suspended Malaysian company IOI, will it lead to strong action or more weak promises?

In what is arguably the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil's (RSPO) most significant intervention in its 12-year history, the organisation has suspended the certification of one of its founding members, IOI, a Malaysian palm oil company which supplies palm oil to more than 300 companies. This means that IOI and its trading division IOI Loders Croklaan will be temporarily prevented from selling palm oil certified as sustainable.

Greenpeace first documented IOI's alleged destruction of orangutan habitat and peatland forest in our 2008 report Burning up Borneo. Since then, IOI has been in the spotlight over accusations of deforestation, including repeated outbreaks of fires in and around its concessions last year.