Palm Oil Sales Still Strong Despite Wanting Sustainability Issue

Sales across South East Asia’s palm oil sector remain strong, despite a regulatory and retail backlash in Europe, according to Peter Van Deursen, CEO of Cargill Asia Pacific.  Van Deursen, in an interview with FoodNavigator-Asia during the Food for the Future Summit, said that the palm oil market is growing regionally, citing exponential growth in palm oil producing countries of South East Asia.

In Europe, the European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly to ban the use of palm oil in all European biofuels by 2020 while, Iceland, a UK supermarket chain announced last month that it will stop using palm oil in its products by the end of this year.  It said that it would replace palm oil with oils and fats that “do not destroy the rainforest”. 

Despite retailers shunning its sales, Van Deursen believes that palm oil will remain important, given its economic efficiency, which he believes is oftern overslooked amid discussions tainted with “a lot of emotions”. He added that with the world population growing, substituting palm oil with alternatives, such as soy or sunflower, will be unsustainable.  It is the rules of supply and demand that will determine the place of palm oil in the market.