IOI Loders Croklaan wins Sustainability Champion Award at FiE, launches solution for lowering saturated fat

13 Dec 2017 --- At FiE in Frankfurt last month, the jury of the Food Ingredients Europe Innovation Awards awarded IOI Loders Croklaan with the Sustainability Champion Award for the company’s efforts in building a traceable, transparent and sustainable palm oil supply chain. The Palm Oil Sustainability Program of IOI Loders Croklaan shows the ability to demonstrate and stimulate innovation and raises the bar for the industry.

IOI Loders Croklaan’s award-winning Palm Oil Sustainability Program consists of a dedicated three-step approach to trace back to the supplier mill and plantation level and works in conjunction with its Sustainable Palm Oil Policy and the third-party supplier annex. The commitments in the area of traceability and transparency are part of the overarching long-term sustainability strategy of IOI Loders Croklaan. 

With the program and policy in place, the organization has shown significant progress in the past few years in building a transparent and sustainable palm oil supply chain. The Sustainable Palm Oil Policy and third-party supplier annex sets high standards and requirements for the business and applies to all suppliers, leveraging the broad reach of IOI Loders Croklaan in the industry to drive those standards down the supply chain. The corresponding three-step approach – focusing on traceability, risk assessment, and supplier capacity building – enables IOI Loders Croklaan to ensure suppliers become compliant with the policy. The most recent achievements can be found in the regularly updated online “Palm Oil Dashboard” 

Ben Vreeburg, Director of Sustainability at IOI Loders Croklaan, explains: “We are very proud to receive this Sustainability Champion Award, as it recognizes that we are on the right track and are a driver for innovation in, and transformation of, the industry. We have achieved 100 percent traceability to mill level. With our strengthened policies and commitments – particularly our third-party supplier policy annex – we have set a new standard for best practices in the sector.”

The company also launched a new saturated fat-lowering solution called Presdough. “Presdough is a shea-based shortening fat which lowers saturated fats in an application like puff pastry, which is a really sensitive application – it’s really hard to get the right puff, to get the right texture, the crispiness,”  Renee Boerefijn at the company tells FoodIngredientsFirst. The company is very proud to have achieved such a dramatic lowering of saturated fats as it wants to help customers in every possible way and bring them alternatives to palm oil going forward.

A video interview with Boerefijn on this technology will be available later this month.