The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has published new data showing an upward trend in the uptake of RSPO-certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO).
Released on 3 November, the data showed that the estimated actual production of CSPO was 14.3M tonnes, which was 18.7% of global palm oil production as of 31 October.
Members with RSPO certification include 462 certified palm oil mills, 95 growers, 3,561 companies and 6,166 facilities/mills with supply chain certificates, according to the data.
The RSPO said its smallholder commitment comprised 168,084 individual smallholders and 490,276ha of smallholder certified area.
Production of CSPO was, on average, 20% lower than the total certified volume.
For sales, as of September 2021, the data showed that of the total production of CSPO, 64.3% was sold as RSPO, while 25% was sold under other schemes.
For Certified Sustainable Palm Kernel Oil (CSPKO), the RSPO said there were no sales reported under other schemes.
Over the past years, sales of CSPKO were higher than actual production, the RSPO said, and in the past year, palm kernel crushing plants had sold 127.9% of the estimated actual production of CSPKO as RSPO-certified.
“A reason for this could be that CSPKO credits and Mass Balance (MB) stocks of kernel crushing plants do not expire, therefore these can be carried over to the next reporting year,” the RSPO said. “And secondly, CSPKO sales can be higher than actual production due to the one-to-one conversion of Identity Preserved/Segregated Certified Sustainable Palm Kernel (CSPK) to MB CSPKO.”
The RSPO said that historically, the supply and sale of CSPKO has been limited despite both increasing availability and demand, with not all CSPK converted into CSPKO
However, downstream RSPO members indicated that market demand for CSPKO derivatives was currently not met by supply and the organisation was now looking into these matters further.
