Singapore-based major palm oil producer Musim Mas has topped the Green Cats scorecard that ranks major palm oil companies around the world based on traceability and transparent policies, and their progress toward achieving globally-recognized policies to reduce their impact on deforestation.
“Green Cats” reports, prepared by Washington-based advocacy group, The Forest Heroes, assess the actions of companies in the palm oil and soybean sectors, in their efforts to adhere to deforestation standards and policies. “Green Tigers” reports concern the actions of 22 palm oil companies while “Green Jaguars” reports assess seven major soybean companies.
The green cats 2018 update puts Musim Mas at the top of the list with a score of 85.5, followed by Wilmar with 77 and Daabon with 76. Sime Darby came fourth with 73.5 while Agropalma placed fifth with 73.
Musim Mas moved up from its fourth place with a score of 73.5 in the previous update in 2016.
“At Musim Mas, we believe in responsible palm oil production that addresses stakeholders’ concerns,” Musim Mas told The Palm Scribe.
The Green Cats 2018 update assesses the companies’ No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation (NDPE) policies along with each agriculture commodity giant’s approach to transparency and traceability of their agriculture products associated with deforestation, peatland destruction, and labor exploitation.
“To meet our NDPE commitments, we have mapped out our supply base and launched an implementation plan combining our approach towards our directly owned and managed operations, our third-party suppliers, smallholders, and to broader landscape-level and sector-wide interventions,” the company said.
They further added that as of December 2017, the company can trace 100 percent of its crude palm oil (CPO) supply base to mill level, and 53 percent of its CPO supply base to plantation level.
The Green Cats reports provide analysis on company actions by examining publicly available data to find gaps between policies and progress and includes criteria used by the companies themselves to present their information publicly, including their supply chain data demonstrating traceability from farm to mill.
These enable companies to be held accountable for their environmental and social impacts. It also allows companies to demonstrate their commitment to their NDPE policies.
Forest Heroes said that since 2013 there has been an increasing number of the world’s largest agricultural commodity companies that have committed themselves to address the deforestation impacts that occur in the supply chain, associated with the commodities they produce, refine, transport and sell.
According to Musim Mas, public assessments similar to Forest Heroes’, which audits companies’ environmental and social policies, and assess progress and impact, provides a valuable opportunity to identify areas where they have done well, and areas they needed to improve.
“We believe that other big companies would generally be concerned about these aspects as well,” Musim Mas said.
The report says that the top fifteen companies had stronger transparency scores versus the bottom seven. Transparency of supply chains is the key difference between the better scoring companies and the worst scoring companies.