There is growing pressure from consumers

News 08 March 2012

French food ingredient producer company Celys, part of the Alva Group, is not a very big player on the global palm oil market. It currently has about twenty ‘in-box’ human food products with palm oil on the market, including things like pastry and frying fats. Celys serves other businesses, not supermarket consumers.

Nevertheless, “like many companies in France, we think joining the RSPO and using sustainable palm oil are the right things to do at this moment,” says Véronique Bariou, purchase manager at Celys. The company aims to use sustainable palm oil in response to demand from its clients.

Management at Celys thought long and hard before becoming a member of the RSPO. But now that they recently became a member, they can’t wait to begin buying and applying segregated sustainable palm oil and to tell their clients about it. “Part of it is because there is growing pressure from consumers,” Bariou says. “Companies are looking for alternatives to conventional palm oil.”

Bariou knows that many French companies are hurrying to follow the Celys example. “I’m really optimistic,” she says. “And the sooner we start motivating oil palm growers to do the right thing, the earlier palm oil will be sustainable.”

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There is growing pressure from consumers