JAKARTA – Golden Agri-Resources (GAR) has announced that it had now achieved a 100 percent traceability of the fesh fruit bunches purchased by all its 44 owned mills.
In a press release issued in Singapore and obtained by the Palm Scribe on Wednesday (February 28, 2018), Golden Agri-Resources (GAR), the company has fi finished mapping all its suppliers to its own mills (44), covering more than 600,000 hectares of estates and accounting for 39 percent of GAR’s total supply of palm oil.
“After we achieved 100 percent Traceability to the Mill in 2015, we embarked on what is possibly the industry’s most ambitious undertaking – to trace more than seven million tonnes of palm oil through 471 mills all the way to the point of origin at the grower’s plantation,” Franky Oesman Widjaja, Chairman and CEO of GAR said in the release.
The company release said that the company is now targeting to achieve 100 percent traceability to the plantation for the remaining 427 mills supplying the company by 2020.
GAR said that with the achievement, 39 percent of the company’s total palm oil supply is now fully traceable.
“We are making strong headway in engaging thousands of farmers and independent suppliers, and with the support of our partners we are set to achieve our 2020 ambition,” Widjaja added.
In the same press release, Agus Purnomo, MD for Sustainability and Strategic Stakeholder Engagement at GAR said that traceability not only guaranteed the provenance of the company’s raw materials, but it also formed the backbone of efforts to engage suppliers in changing for good.
“We need to first know who they are if we are to help them transform their businesses, and join us in our efforts to build a more responsible, resilient palm oil industry,” Purnomo said.
In the second phase, to assure traceability for third-party supplier mills, the company has already visited 40 of those mills in 2017, to assess their compliance with the responsible palm practices spelled out in the GAR Social and Environment Policy (GSEP).
GAR is working with a network of partners to support independent suppliers establish tracing and verification processes, providing the foundation to later ensure compliance. They include geotraceabillity, Kotiva and Neste.
GAR is one of the leading palm oil plantation companies with a total planted area of 502,847 hectares (including plasma smallholders) as at 31 December 2017, located in Indonesia. It has integrated operations focused on the production of palm-based edible oil and fat.