Palm Oil Suppliers: Focusing on Sustainability Commitment 

Stratas Foods LLC is fiercely focused on redefining what it means to prioritize Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) efforts. By integrating ESG into our business operations, we can help our customers, employees, and community thrive.

One of our main goals is to focus on sustainability and reduce deforestation. This includes the monitoring of the performance of our tier-one palm suppliers. 

In this blog, we’ll discuss:

• Definition of palm oil 

• Our  palm oil suppliers approach 

• The results of our palm oil supplier evaluation  

• Review of our palm policies 

What is palm oil? 

Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil that comes from the fruit of oil palm trees. Within the oil palm trees, two different types of oils can be produced: one type of oil comes from the squeezing of the fruit of the tree and the other comes from the crushing of the kernel inside of the fruit. Palm oil is in nearly everything including food, shampoo, animal feed, and biofuel. But how do we get palm oil? Through our palm oil suppliers. Palm suppliers are a type of vendor that supplies palm oil to certain industries like the Foodservice and Food Ingredients markets. 

At Stratas Foods, we get our palm oil from other companies. We also use palm oil in our products. However, we understand that the heavy use of palm oil is impacting the world’s biodiverse forests and is becoming a leading cause of deforestation. With this being said, we are working closely with our customers and industry stakeholders to help develop a more sustainable supply chain for palm oil, palm kernel oil, and their derivatives. 

What is Stratas Foods’ approach to palm oil suppliers? 

In 2021, we began implementing an annual supplier evaluation process to assess the performance of our tier-one palm suppliers in order to help reduce the amount of deforestation. We also put this process into place to identify supply chain risks. Additionally, this approach helped us ensure compliance against our NDPE commitments. Our process and our results did and will help continue to take positive action against deforestation. 

Evaluation Process & Results 

Throughout our evaluation process, we assessed five of our direct palm oil suppliers and their progress in a number of key areas including: environmental and social policies, timebound implementation plans, supplier engagements efforts, grievance management procedures, and deforestation monitoring. 

• All five of our suppliers had a no deforestation, no expansion on peat, and no exploitation (NDPE) policy in place.

• 80% of our suppliers had a grievance management procedure in place, which fully aligns with our expectations.

  • 20% of our suppliers only partially met this criteria. 

• 50% of our suppliers conducted some sort of deforestation monitoring and reported on the supply base coverage.

  • The other 50% did carry out deforestation monitoring but the scope of coverage was unclear.

To learn more about our Palm Supplier Engagement Process, click here.

Palm Supply Chain Policies

The results above are just the beginning of our efforts in our fight against deforestation. We have also put into place the following standards for our palm oil suppliers:

• No deforestation of high carbon stock (HCS) forests or high conservation value (HCV) areas

• No development of peatlands, regardless of depth 

• No exploitation of people and local communities

We also understand that it will take time for our suppliers to improve their performance. We will continue to work with our palm oil suppliers to develop appropriate action plans to create a more sustainable supply chain. With this being said, those suppliers who do not work to improve their policies will be terminated.

Lastly, we understand that sometimes there may be instances where our stakeholders or the general public will want to bring non-compliance matters to our attention. We have a process put into place to investigate all of the grievances that are submitted and will work with our suppliers to resolve the matter. 

To learn more about our Palm Oil Sustainability Process, visit our website.

Making Food Better For You & The Planet

At Stratas Foods, we pride ourselves in being the leading supplier of fats, oils, mayonnaise, dressings, and sauces to the various Foodservice markets throughout North America. All of the products we develop have the demands of the consumer to make healthier choices. Our sauces are also made with sustainable ingredients in order to prevent deforestation. 

Learn more about our sustainability efforts by visiting our website. 

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