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Our Objectives
- To produce quality palm oil, palm kernels, coconuts and their derived products in a sustainable manner to the total satisfaction of our worldwide valued customers.
- To produce elite oil palm, coconut and banana planting materials with proven yield potential.
- To value our human resources and to continue striving to provide a conducive and safe environment at the work place.
- To adopt proven and sustainable agricultural practices that are environmentally compatible.
- To promote the conservation and development of biodiversity within our group of plantations.
- To continue to work towards a dynamic and innovative waste management and utilization system aimed towards achieving zero waste.
A panoramic view of UP’s unique light rail transport system, a combined length of approximately 550km ensures expedient delivery of FFB to the mills with minimal handling which ensures high CPO quality with low FFA content.
For further information on Sustainable Palm Oil
(updated as of 31 December 2019), please click here
For further information on Our Policies and Commitments
(updated as of 31 December 2019), please click here
Company Policies
As an important step towards improving our sustainability within economic, environmental and social areas of our business, we ensure the commitment stated in our Company Policies apply to our employees (including permanent and temporary workers), contractors, suppliers (including direct and independent/third party), trading partners, , scheme smallholders (plasma) and stakeholders:
Click here to view Supplier Code of Conduct
Click here to view Responsible Sourcing Policy
Click here to view Biodiversity and Environment Policy
Click here to view Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Policy
Click here to view Human Rights Policy
Click here to view Gender Policy
Click here to view Guest Workers Policy
Click here to view Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Policy
Click here to view Code of Conduct and Business Ethics
Click here to view Whistleblower Policy
Click here to view Policy on Documents that Can Be Made Publicly Available
Company Commitment
Towards:
(i) Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)
United Plantations and Unitata have been active members of the RSPO since the early beginnings; our membership was approved on the 20th July 2004.
UP’s entire oil palm plantations in Malaysia were successfully certified in accordance with the RSPO Principles & Criteria on the 26th of August 2008 thus becoming the world’s first producer of certified sustainable palm oil. It subsequently conducted its second cycle recertification in 2013 and a third recertification in 2017.
For its Indonesian operations, UP had moved towards RSPO Initial Main Assessment for part of our HGU area in December 2017 and successfully obtained the certificate in November 2018. We anticipate to carry out the RSPO Surveillance Audit 1 concurrently with Scope Extension Audit for the newly acquired HGU area of 6004.15Ha in 3rd quarter of 2019. The Time Bound Plan for all the areas being certified will be in tandem with the hectarage issued with HGU certificates by the Government of Indonesia. This is expected by 2020.
For our Plasma smallholders scheme, full certification is expected by 2021 subject to issuance of individual land certificates by the local government.
United Plantations is committed to moving towards full segregation and traceable supply chain models and is therefore slowly reducing mass balance solutions.
Please click the link below to view our latest ACOP report in RSPO Website:
http://www.rspo.org/members/33/United-Plantations-Bhd
(ii) RSPO-NEXT
UP and RSPO NEXT Certificate in 2017
In 2017, United Plantations become the first Company in Asia Pacific to become RSPO NEXT certified by taking on the challenge and voluntarily pursuing to obtain the RSPO NEXT Certification for two (2) of our business units and was successful in becoming the first Company in Asia Pacific to become RSPO NEXT certified. Nevertheless, upon successfully obtaining the RSPO Next Certificate, it became clear that the early commitments made to uptake palm oil with this higher sustainability standard within the RSPO disappeared with western CGMS and other clients showing no interest. The RSPO NRXT has been carved out in such a way that it is based on fulfilling the spirit of “Commensurate Effort”
Commensurate Effort in this sense obliges not just the eligible growers to produce but also commits any eligible buyer such as consumer goods manufacturers or retailers to also fulfil their part of the shared responsibility, namely, to offtake or purchase RSPO NRXT certified Palm Oil thereby not inducing growers these ever stringent and high sustainability criteria only to find out that there is no demand.
As there has been no demand for RSPO NEXT products in the market, UP has decided not to proceed with RSPO NEXT certification in 2019, even though we are confident of fulfilling our commitment by going beyond the RSPO standard compliance. In addition, with the revised RSPO P & C Standards 2018 we can see that the RSPO Standards has moved closer to the RSPO NEXT Standards.
Click here to view our RSPO-NEXT Certificates.
(iii) Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO)
The Indonesian Government established a mandatory certification scheme in 2011, namely Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil Principles & Criteria (ISPO) to ensure all producers within a few years will have to live up to certain standards when operating in Indonesia.
Being mandatory, producers in Indonesia will have to comply with the ISPO criteria and cannot hide behind the voluntary RSPO scheme as members only.
The ISPO standard includes legal, economic, environmental and social requirement which largely are based on existing national regulations. The ISPO Initial Main Assessment for our Indonesian Plantations has been conducted concurrently with RSPO Initial Main Assessment in 2017 for a part of our HGU area. Subsequently, the ISPO Scope Extension Assessment for newly acquired HGU area of 6004.15Ha was conducted on 9th August 2018 and awaiting issuance of the ISPO certificate.
(iv) Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO)
The Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) standard is a national certification standard created by the Malaysian government and developed with input from stakeholders in the palm oil industry. First launched in November 2013, it officially came into implementation in January 2015.
Minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities Malaysia, Datuk Seri Mah Siew Keong had announced all plantations with RSPO certification shall comply with MSPO standard by 31st December 2018. “The move to make the compliance mandatory is not to penalize the stakeholders, instead it is aimed at upgrading the whole industry, he said, adding that the mandatory compliance was also a significant step towards branding local palm oil as sustainably produced and safe.”
The additional efforts and commitment were cemented by obtaining the MSPO Certification in September 2018 for all of our mills and estates in Malaysia.
Click here to view our MSPO Policy.
(v) Sustainable Palm Oil Transparency Toolkit (SPOTT)
UP participated in the Sustainable Palm Oil Transparency Toolkit (SPOTT) assessment conducted by Zoological Society of London (ZSL). SPOTT is designed to measure the transparency of Companies in public disclosures of best practices and sustainability commitments via the RSPO Annual Communication of progress (ACOP), RSPO New Planting Procedures (NPP) Public Notification, Company Annual/Sustainability Report and Company Websites.
The key objectives of the SPOTT assessment are to promote industry transparency and accountability to drive the uptake and implementation of environmental and social best practices in high biodiversity impact sectors.
SPOTT’s online platform provides a scorecard and detailed assessment of upstream companies based on public disclosure of their operations, commitments and progress towards the implementation of best practices.
United Plantations Berhad maintains an active engagement and commits to collaborate with Zoological Society of London (ZSL) in the progress towards improving sustainability reporting and enhancing a greater transparency.
Our current status on SPOTT assessment as November 2018 is 86.50% resulting in UP being ranked as number 5 amongst the 70 assessed Global Oil Palm Plantations (In year 2017, the score was 81.90% and the rank as number 6 amongst 50 assessed Global Oil Palm Plantations)
For further details on SPOTT assessment for palm oil companies, please refer to https://www.spott.org/palm-oil
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