Nestlé's palm oil and the devastating effect on Indonesia's rainforest

Did you know that Nestlé produce enough KitKats every five minutes to stack the Eiffel Tower?

If you like Kitkats this is an amazing picture now painted in your head.

There is however a downside.

The palm oil used in KitKats is produced by companies who are demolishing areas of the Indonesian rainforest to create palm oil plantations, so by association Nestlé is also therefore implicated in the deforestation of rainforests.

Now Nestlé have denied  this, obviously and I sincerely hope Greenpeace will keep up the pressure on Nestlé to ensure their palm oil is from sustainable sources.

Below is the response from Nestlé:

We can assure you that Nestlé UK does not buy palm oil from the Sinar Mas Group for any of our products, including Kit Kat.

We do purchase palm oil from Cargill and we have sought assurances from them about their supply chain. Cargill has informed us that Sinar Mas needs to answer Greenpeace’s allegations by the end of April. They have indicated that they will delist Sinar Mas if they do not take corrective action by then.

Nestlé recently undertook a detailed review of its supply chain to establish the source of its palm oil supplies and we have made a commitment to using only "Certified Sustainable Palm Oil" by 2015, when sufficient quantities should be available.  As an important step on that journey, a number of Nestlé markets, including Nestlé UK, have already purchased Green Palm certificates, the certificate trading programme designed to help suppliers tackle the environmental and social problems created by the production of palm oil.

Endangered species such as orang-utans are among the worst affected wildlife species in Indonesia, now there are charities and organisations working to save the orang-utan and prevent the deforestation.

Indonesia has announced that they will introduce a two-year moratorium on deforestation to help tackle climate change, the country's president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has said. 

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono made the announcement in Norway on the eve of a climate conference in Oslo.

In addition to the work of Greenpeace, commitments from Nestlé and the work of charities in Indonesia this announcement is fantastic and it proves that by all of these groups working together that actually a harmonious result can be achieved.

Here is an extract from the Greenpeace Statement, to read the full statement go here:

You'll never guess what. Nestlé has only gone and agreed to our campaign demands! And you've made this possible. We really, seriously could not have done it without you. Now we need to move straight on to the next big player in the palm oil industry - banking giant HSBC. With nearly 1.5m views of our Kit Kat advert, over 200,000 emails sent, hundreds of phone calls and countless Facebook comments, you made it clear to Nestlé that it had to address the problems with the palm oil and paper products it buys. When combined with orang-utans at Nestlé HQ's in Croydon, Frankfurt, Beijing and Jakarta, and banners dropped over the AGM in Switzerland, Nestle top brass have really been under pressure.

Let us hope that Nestlé stick to their word and that Greenpeace and public opinion can change the minds of HSBC.

HSBC's policy says that it will "not provide financial services which directly support operations in wetlands on the Ramsar [Convention on Wetlands of International Importance] list". And yet we've recently published evidence to show that Sinar Mas has expanded its operations around the Danau Sentarum National Park in Kalimantan, one of the very wetlands on the Ramsar list.


HSBC bosses need to know the devastating effect their investments are having, and that they can't bank on deforestation or driving orang-utans to extinction.

Email HSBC CEO Michael Geoghegan now - you made Nestlé take action, let's make HSBC listen as well.

Another day and another email from Nestle about Mugabe!

Another day, another email, actually though this one has made me somewhat angrier.

There is an implication that they have only stopped purchasing milk from Grace Mugabe's Gushungo Dairy Estate because a lot of people like me and you got in touch to complain, not that they should have a conscience and shouldn't fund the evil dictator through a back door IE via his wife's dairy business.


Although as Caron and others will testify, Nestle don't have a conscience!

"Dear Mr Reeves,

Thank you for getting in touch.

The Dairy Board of Zimbabwe have now informed the Gushungo Dairy Estate, and the 7 other farms with whom Nestlé began working on a temporary basis in February 2009, that it is now in a position to resume purchasing their milk. Nestlé Zimbabwe therefore will no longer be receiving milk from these 8 farms from Sunday 4 October.

In February 2009 the food and economic crisis in Zimbabwe reached a level where the dairy industry was at real risk of collapse, and the Dairy Board was no longer able to buy milk from these 8 farms. In light of our long-term commitment to Zimbabwe, we bought this milk on a temporary basis. This helped prevent a further deterioration in food supplies in Zimbabwe at that time.

Nestlé has been in Zimbabwe for 50 years, working with the population of Zimbabwe and striving to maintain a long-term viable operation in often challenging conditions. We operate in Zimbabwe, as we do in every country, through good times and bad. We work for the long-term, in a way which has positive impact on our consumers, employees and suppliers.

In light of the recent controversy surrounding our relationship with the Gushungo Dairy Estate, we believe that this announcement reflects our long-term commitment to Zimbabwe while acknowledging the specific circumstances around these events.

Thank you again for taking the trouble to contact us. We are grateful for the interest you have shown in our company."

Nestle defends and still supports Mugabe

On Friday I blogged about how buying a kitkat was funding Robert Mugabe and that according to Nestle they stopped purchasing milk from Grace Mugabe who now owns Gushungo Dairy Estate.

However, last Friday I emailed Nestle directly to ascertain the facts. Today I received a reply from a Consumer Relations Executive in the Consumer Services Department where at no point in the email does it say that Nestle have stopped purchasing milk from Grace Mugabe or Gushungo Dairy.

Here is the email in full;

"Dear Mr Reeves,

Thank you very much for your email.

Nestlé Zimbabwe owns and operates a factory in Harare, producing milk powder and cereals mainly for the local market. Nestlé is a fully-fledged member of the local community in Zimbabwe, employing around 200 people there and providing additional employment for many hundreds of milk farmers and other suppliers.

The continuous supply of consistently high quality fresh milk is crucial to Nestlé’s operations in Zimbabwe. During the last few years Nestlé has witnessed the collapse of Zimbabwe’s dairy industry. Nestlé prefers to work within contractual agreements to ensure a constant supply of fresh milk but, at the end of 2008, the company found itself operating in a market where eight of its sixteen contractual suppliers had gone out of business.

As a result, in early 2009, Nestlé was forced to purchase milk on the open market from a wide variety of suppliers on a non-contractual basis. This includes milk from the Gushungo Dairy Estate which today accounts for between 10 and 15 per cent of Nestlé's local milk supply.

Nestlé is a truly global company which operates in almost all countries in the world in a wide variety of political settings. Despite the ongoing crisis in Zimbabwe, Nestlé has not considered moving its operations out of the country. By providing basic food products to Zimbabwean consumers, Nestlé aims to meet the needs of the local population, many of whom are vulnerable and disadvantaged. Had Nestlé decided to close down its operations in Zimbabwe, the company would have triggered further food shortages and hundreds of job losses among its employees and milk suppliers in an already very difficult situation.

Thank you again for taking the trouble to contact us. We are grateful for the interest you have shown in our company."

This email in my mind clarifies and underlines that Nestle are still purchasing milk from Grace Mugabe especially this line "This includes milk from the Gushungo Dairy Estate which today accounts for between 10 and 15 per cent of Nestlé's local milk supply."

Their justification for buying milk from an evil dictators wife is that if they didn't jobs would have been lost, but where is their statement on Corporate Social Responsibility and how does supporting Mugabe fit into that?

I decided to search for this, on the Nestle Zimbabwe site in the media centre, an almost duplicate of the email to me is displayed as the media statement but CSR is a large document, so I will be downloading this and reporting back soon.

Therefore every time you buy a kitkat, a tube of smarties or any of the hundreds of brands owned by Nestle you are clearly helping to fund Mugabe the Zimbabwe dictator, I for one could not have that on my conscience.

Buy a KitKat and pay Mugabe

According to today's Metro, Nestle, who my friend and colleague Caron blogs about occasionally (about boycotting them regarding baby milk), has admitted it bought milk from Gushungo Dairy Estate, owned by Grace Mugabe, the wife of Robert Mugabe the evil dictator who controls Zimbabwe.

Apparently Grace Mugabe obtained Gushungo Dairy Estate during the 2002 controversial land seizure programme.

So when you feel the urge for a KitKat, just think about it first. The 55p you hand over to the shopkeeper, goes in the till but how much actually then goes to Grace Mugabe who is no doubt funding Robert Mugabe's election campaign.

If you want to boycott Nestle then you probably need to know which brands to boycott, it isn't as easy as not buying KitKats, smarties or the odd jar of coffee so visit their site for more information.

Although Nestle claim they stopped purchasing the milk from that farm as from last Sunday, how much produce is already in the food chain.

That's a political donation you really don't want on your conscience.