Unilever is to partner with US tech company Orbital Insight to help eliminate deforestation and other environmental threats in its agricultural supply chains. Yesterday the company announced a pilot project aimed at overcoming the challenges of tracing the difficult ‘first mile’ of a commodity’s journey. Global agricultural supply chains can be highly complex, with many layers between a manufacturer such as Unilever and the original land on which the commodities it uses originate. As such, the consumer goods giants’ pilot project with Orbital seeks to overcome these difficulties, principally in the context of palm oil, a commodity that has fuelled rampant deforestation in Indonesia and across south-east Asia, as well as soy. Unilever said it would use geolocation data and satellite imagery to identify the individual farms and plantations that are supplying the palm oil mills in its extended supply chain. The insight gained from the project would help it develop a clearer picture of where harvested crops originate, and so pre-empt potential issues such as deforestation or where they are identified act.

Posted by

Business Green