The Swiss will cast their votes on March 7th on three different issues. One of them involves free trade agreement with Indonesia.What interest does Switzerland have in an Asian country more than 11,000 km away? Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of palm oil, a raw material that is much in demand in Switzerland, as…
Palm oil is a highly controversial topic in the sustainability community. Why? Because palm oil is made from the fruit of oil palm trees — or Elaeis guineensis trees, which grow in rainforests. They’re bulldozed, burned down, or otherwise cleared for palm oil production, destroying natural habitats and releasing harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.…
World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch can now track deforestation shortly after it occurs despite being obscured by cloud cover. The functionality will greatly improve efforts to monitor tropical deforestation and degradation. Radar for Detecting Deforestation (RADD) alerts use radar data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellites, which cover the tropics every 6 to…
Swiss voters will decide on a free trade agreement (FTA) with Indonesia on Sunday, with lower tariffs on palm oil imports the main issue in what the polls predict will be a tight referendum. The Alpine country signed the pact with Indonesia in 2018 together with the other European Free Trade Association (EFTA) members Iceland,…
The Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) has come up with a three-wheeled utility farm vehicle equipped with a hybrid power electric sprayer system to assist planters with their maintenance work and transportation of palm fruits in the estates. In a statement, MPOB said a group of its researchers led by Dr Mohd Azwan Mohd Bakri…
The Regional Disaster Mitigation Office (BPBD) of Riau Province, in collaboration with other related offices, stationed several thousand personnel in its efforts to avert and tackle forest fires. Some six thousand personnel constituting BPBD, military, and police officers, were deployed throughout the 12 districts and cities in the province, Head of the Riau BPBD Edward…
Purpose and sustainability are front in center at most public companies as investors as well as consumers’ expectations have evolved. Why should private companies care? Is there a model companies should consider as they integrate adding good to society into their business objectives? “Increasingly companies — both private and public — are being asked to…
The Swiss government has allocated grant funding of $65 million (around CHF59 million) over a period of four years to the island nation. The amount set aside is for the 2021-2024 period and will focus on promoting “inclusive and sustainable development”, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) announced on Thursday. The new round of funding…
Palm Oil fruit farmers have resorted to harvesting immature fruits because of improved prices. The price of the Fresh Fruit Bunch-FFB increased to Shillings 700 from Shillings 400 in December last year. The price has increased further to Shillings 831 a kilogram. David Balironda, the Manager Kalangala Oil Palm Tree Out Growers Trust (KOPGT), says…
Indonesian President Joko Widodo said on Monday local authorities should get prepared for potential forest fires later this year as hot spots had been detected on the island of Sumatra. The Southeast Asian country has suffered some of the biggest tropical forest fires outside the Amazon and Congo in recent years, putting at risk endangered…
Norway’s Statkraft STATKF.UL and Aker Horizons, a unit of investment firm Aker AKER.OL, have joined chemicals firm Yara YAR.OL in electrifying and decarbonising a plant in Norway to produce zero carbon ammonia, the companies said on Thursday. Yara, one of the world’s largest producers of nitrogen fertilisers, aims to eliminate CO2 emissions from the 500,000-tonnes-a-year…
Environmentalists in Indonesia have called on the government to try and settle more than 1,000 disputes triggered by the presence of palm oil plantations, including agrarian ones between indigenous people and palm oil companies across the country. They said the situation is threatening to spiral out of control In its annual report issued on Feb…
On Oct. 13, Procter & Gamble (P&G) received a stunning rebuke from two-thirds of its voting shareholders, who sent a message that the company is failing to protect communities, forests and the global climate throughout its supply chain. More than 100 days later, P&G, which manufactures Charmin toilet paper entirely from virgin forest fiber, has yet to demonstrate…
The application of disruptive technologies will be the driver of innovations in all sectors including the palm oil industry, Minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities Datuk Dr Mohd Khairuddin Aman Razali said. He said technologies have been innovated and improved to boost the effectiveness and competitiveness of the upstream, midstream, and downstream sectors of the…
The new ASEAN–EU Strategic Partnership announced on 1 December 2020 marks a turning point in the relationship between the two regional organisations — not only has the donor–recipient dynamic of previous decades disappeared, but now the European Union may need ASEAN more than ASEAN needs the European Union. The strategic partnership contains cooperative arrangements on a wide…
Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation, and 10th largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity, has made enormous gains in poverty reduction – cutting the poverty rate by more than half since 1999, to 9.78 percent in 2020. Nevertheless, out of a population of 270.2 million, an estimated 26.42 million Indonesians still live…
Economist at UOB Group Enrico Tanuwidjaja evaluates the latest trade balance figures in Indonesia. “Indonesia posted another trade surplus of +USD2.0bn in January 2021, slightly narrower from December 2020’s +USD2.1bn. This marked a ninth-straight month of trade surplus since May 2020.” “Exports slowed by +12.2% y/y in January to USD15.3bn (vs. December’s +14.6%) following lower…
The Philippines Coconut Authority (PCA) is pushing to increase the country’s biodiesel mandate in transport to 5pc (B5) from 2pc currently. B2 has been in place since 2009 but Covid-19 disruptions to the biodiesel supply chain meant the Philippines missed its target to achieve B5 in 2020. This was the second time the implementation was…
As the world’s largest producer and consumer of palm oil, the palm oil industry has become an important part of Indonesia’s economy. At least half of the world’s palm oil supplies are supplied from Indonesia. Indonesia supplies with an output of around 40.6 million tons, and export volume of 29.3 million tons in 2018. This…
The Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) has produced a new concept of snack food with high commercial potential made from red palm oil. Director-general Dr Ahmad Parveez Ghulam Kadir said the extruded snack food has already been commercialised in China, and this could further increase China’s demand for palm oil. “This red palm-based snack is…
