Section 2: Opportunities for Palm Oil in Asian Market:
Opportunities for Certified Sustainable Malaysian Palm Oil in Asian Markets
Mr. Mohammad Hafezh
Mr Mohammad Hafezh bin Abdul Rahman has been involved in the palm oil industry for the past 15 years especially in marketing, market development and market analysis. He was directly involved in various market activities in the Asia Pacific region and later, the Middle East where he engaged with various stakeholders from food manufacturers, traders, consumers and even government officials in trying to increase the import of Malaysian palm oil in these regions and also improve palm oil’s image as a healthy and sustainable source of oils and fats.
He has brought over his expertise in market strategy and industry engagements to the Malaysian Palm Oil Certification Council (MPOCC) to link and proves to all stakeholders that Malaysian palm oil is indeed sustainable where environmental conservation, social welfare on top of food safety are strictly adhered by the Malaysian palm oil industry players through the Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) certification.
With an aspiration to get MSPO recognized in the global market, Mr Hafezh has believed in strengthening the MSPO standards through continuous improvements, constant communications to various stakeholders and direct engagement with local and foreign companies to convince them that MSPO is a good alternative in offering assurance that the palm oil produced in Malaysia satisfies to all sustainability requirements while ensuring everyone involved throughout the supply chain will not be left behind.
Countries with the largest and fastest growing producing and consuming of palm oil are situated in Asia. India, China, and Indonesia account for 40% of all pathways to promote sustainable trade between key trading nations. Of this, 85-90 % comes from Malaysia and Indonesia, where worldwide demand for palm oil has lifted incomes, especially in rural areas, but at the cost of tremendous environmental devastation such deforestation and often labour and human rights abuses as most globally debated sustainable management issues. However, at the same time, it views as a poverty-reduction scheme by the producing nations and as a growth engine for developing economies by the international finance organisations. The commodity then later witnessed an increase in the adoption of sustainability standards includes voluntary standards such as Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) and national standards namely Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) and Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO). Latest initiative done by India in development of Indian Palm Oil Sustainability (IPOS) supporting the conviction that national standards are key instruments for sustainable palm oil production.
For MSPO, efforts have been put in place to developed, educate, implement, and finally mandatory for all the plantations including smallholders to be certified with MSPO by stages. It later evolved with the launched of MSPO Trace in 2019 where it meets the demand of traceability and transparency in sustainability management. MSPO-Trace is accessible to the palm oil product end-consumer to trace the origin of the palm oil. Besides that, there are also collaboration with importing countries such as China Green Food, adoption in Olympics 2020 for sustainable sourcing policy, and ILO, US ILAB for addressing labour issue in the oil palm plantations. With the increase of commitments by the producing and importing countries and companies towards sustainable sourcing, MSPO will create a competitive edge of certified sustainable palm oil.
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