Major Korean palm oil supplier Korindo has been stripped of its association with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and its trademark FSC licences will be terminated from 16th October.
The BBC reports that FSC’s rejection of Korindo came in the wake of the broadcaster’s own investigation into the company. Evidence appeared to show that Korindo had bought up swathes of rainforest in the Indonesian province of Papua and breached FSC regulations by deliberately setting forest fires, the BBC claims.
In a statement, the FSC said that before the decision was taken, Korindo was ‘working to achieve significant social and environmental improvements’ as outlined in a set of preliminary conditions defined by FSC in 2019. However, FSC and Korindo had not been able to agree on a procedure to verify progress.
“It had become an untenable situation for FSC that we were not able to verify improvements in Korindo’s social and environmental performance against the agreed preliminary conditions. This is why the Board decided to disassociate,” said Kim Carstensen, FSC International director general. “We believe this will give us clarity and a breath of fresh air while Korindo continues its efforts to improve social and environmental performance.”
Kwangyul Peck, chief sustainability officer at Korindo Group, said: “The decision to stop the association proceedings came as a great surprise as we fulfilled every step on the mutually agreed roadmap in the past years. It is important to understand that there were no material issues in the MoU or the roadmap but only procedural discrepancies on the selection process of the independent and impartial verifier, which caused a delay in the association process.”
Seo Jeongsik, vice president at Korindo Group, added: “Against the background of Korindo’s clear commitment to ESG and sustainability, we want to emphasise the joint commitment of both FSC and Korindo Group to re-enter the association process as soon as possible. Our objective is still to become unconditionally associated with FSC and we will continue to make progress on the defined roadmap.”
