The complexity of the palm oil supply chain means that achieving traceability to plantation level can be a time and resource-intensive process. A critical step towards palm oil supply chain traceability is identifying the locations of mills. In November 2018, Global Forest Watch (GFW) introduced the new Universal Mill List (UML), created by the World Resources Institute (WRI), Rainforest Alliance (RA), Proforest and Daemeter.

The UML identifies and maps 1,815 mills across 26 countries in order to provide a better framework for companies looking to monitor and report on their commitments. The UML also integrates data contributed by processors, traders, consumer goods manufacturers, the RSPO and FoodReg.

Bunge Loders Croklaan has joined forces with GFW to integrate and verify our own mill list with the UML. Recent publication of our mill lists now includes an additional column titled “UML Mill Code”. Since the industry uses a lot of different naming standards (think of POM versus Palm Oil Mill, Mill 4 versus Mill IV etc.), creating the link between the UML and BLC supplying mills will take some time.

In our mill lists for Q4 2018, most of our supplying mills have already been linked to the UML codes. Our collaboration with GFW should ensure that soon we can provide all our supplying mills with a UML Mill Code, thereby increasing our data quality and transparency. We urge all organizations in the palm oil supply chain that publish and share mill lists to also include the UML code in their publications.

Our mill lists are updated each quarter.