Food Matters Live Rotterdam 2025: Daabon targets palm oil carbon neutrality amid sustainability demands
29 Sep 2025 | Daabon
Manuel Davila, managing director at Daabon Europe, discussed the company’s goal to become the first carbon-neutral palm oil producer by utilizing all parts of the palm tree and generating energy from biomass. He called the palm oil boycott trend “short-sighted” and urged brands to support sustainable sourcing, emphasizing the importance of transparency and addressing the root issues.
This is Missy Green with Food Ingredients first.
I'm here with Manuel Davila, who's the managing director at Dabon Europe.
So welcome.
Tell us a little bit about how Dabo is rewriting the, the story of palm oil.
Thank you, Missy.
This company is a 3rd generation family business that has been working the farms of Colombia.
And growing palm for several generations and what we focused on is learning from the mistakes of the past and focused on the future.
We certified our plantations organic, then became sustainably certified, and now strive to become the first company worldwide to offer carbon neutral palm oil by really closing the loop on circular economy, utilizing all the resources of the supply chain, generating energy from this, being able to inset rather than offset.
Our carbon emissions and be able to deliver palm oil and solutions out of palm to the food ingredients sector.
So you said that you haven't paid an electricity bill in like 17 years, right, for the extraction mill.
Yes, yes, yes.
So for the extraction mill, so could you tell us a little bit of like the concrete ways that you're closing the loop?
Yeah, so when we harvest the fruit of the palm, we extract the oil but remain with a vast amount of liquid biomass and solid biomass.
The liquid biomass we then collect it and Put it into anaerobic digesters in which the methane gas that is released is captured, desulfurized, and then used to run our generators where we produce approximately 2 megawatts of electricity.
And in the case of the solid biomass, we then compact it into tiny pellets to be able to increase its calorific value to the same levels as coal, which is how we feed our furnaces to generate heat and steam.
So you're using all of the, the palm fruit.
Yes, we're utilizing everything and we're thinking about using much more than that.
So we have several technical experiments I can share with you right now in which we strive to do even more out of this material.
Most people think that a palm oil plantation only gives you oil.
It gives you much more than this, and we're starting to just hit the tip.
Of the iceberg and we think that in the next couple of years what is only carbon neutral could become actually carbon negative.
Oh wow, OK, and that's with technology that you can't share yet.
We're working on it, OK, to be continued on that, OK, and And you also showed in your presentation earlier that the company was planned for a lot of growth in terms of land, but this has changed.
So can you tell us about that?
Yes, a couple of years ago my family signed a document called the Climate Pledge that was set out by Jeff Bezos where companies will publicly pledge to become a carbon net zero by 2040.
This has a series of consequences and decisions that have been taken inside the organization.
Such as land that we have purchased, we are not planning to be using for agricultural purposes but rather for conservation purposes.
This has massive implications of family businesses because we thought that this was the next generation's job is to plant these areas.
It's really interesting to see the economics of it, how's the value of land has changed, but rather it's more valuable to preserve than it is to farm.
How did, how did that happen?
Is there some sort of like subsidy program that if you conserve land, or how does, how does it get more valuable by the carbon credits it generates.
So overall we have to see it as a whole system.
Yes, you have the circular economy of the actual production per se, but if you continue to have land.
Then the question is, do you want to exploit it agriculturally or do you want to preserve it to offset things that you cannot physically offset, for example, the refining process.
In the refining process we're looking at solar energy.
The grid of Colombia already provides 70% hydroelectrical power, so we have pretty good energy quality in terms of sustainability credentials in Colombia, but we still need to finish closing the gap.
How do we do this?
With these conservation areas.
So, what is the value of land?
The value of land is what the market will best offer to you either by growing something and giving to the market or preserving, sequestering the carbon.
And then finding an offtaker of those carbon credits.
So it's been rather popular the last couple of years for for products to have a no palm oil label on their products.
What are you saying to those companies who say, you know, consumers don't want palm oil?
I think that they're just following a trend.
Without fully really fixing the problem or understanding the problem or wanting to fix the problem even if they understand it.
There's been a series of mistakes.
Taken by the industry approximately 30 to 40 years ago at the rapid expansion of this industry.
This created a backlash as to the use of the ingredient.
However, very few companies decided to fix the supply chain but rather walk away from it.
And when they walked away from it, there's one element that people forget about it.
The European Union or any other developed nation are not the only markets where this commodity gets sold.
So if nobody stands for demanding, hey, you should fix the industry, you should be sustainable, and it has an incentive for people to change, people will not change.
They will just sell it to somebody else that doesn't require anything like markets like Pakistan, India, and China.
So when they put that in label, yes, it's connecting to whatever trendsetters or influencers are saying, but it doesn't really fix the issue.
To fix the issue you should include the ingredient and say we are sourcing and sustainable.
We are helping the industry to change.
We're standing here and telling you this is where it comes from.
We know where it comes from.
We have the checks and balances, and we're helping to fix this issue.
Walking away from the issue, saying, hey, I'm now using a different fat such as sun, butter, or others doesn't mean that you fix the issue by creating less demand, not at all.
One of another very important points that people forget.
This raw material is used in biofuels and the Indonesian government and the Malaysian government had made it very clear.
If the food demand drops for pump, we'll just put it more in biofuels, and now you cannot control what they decide to do with it.
This is the argument of you left the tables you cannot tell the table what to do.
If you want to change the industry, sit down at the table and help us change it.
So you think boycotting palm oil is not the way to change it.
In conclusion, in conclusion, it's very shortsighted.
It's very, very, very shortsighted.
This is why explaining the palm problem takes time.
It takes a couple of minutes of really understanding the problem so you can actually see the full picture and see that's not the correct approach.
The big NGOs agree with us, Greenpeace, WF, you go worldwide, they know that you cannot fix a problem by walking away.
Yes, they report their scorecards.
Yes, they have to do the checks and balances.
They still have to tell everybody, hey, we pay attention to the company.
The company is not doing good because somebody has to be the watchdog.
I agree with that, but the consumer not supporting all of the effort that we're putting into an example like this show.
We just put up a whole show, the whole investment, and then we have companies that say, I would love to have your product, but the retailers say that we cannot have it.
What am I gonna do?
I'm gonna call plantation and tell them, sorry, we did everything but the market said that they didn't want it.
What is the plantation going to do, they're still going to produce oil.
There's still fruits in the palm.
We've got to feed our people.
We have 5000 families to feed.
Oh, sell it to somebody else that doesn't want the certification.
In a couple of years, let's decertify some of the plantations like.
It's a, it's a loop.
It's a loop, so either we reinforce the loop to make sure that it has a market.
Or we just have to continue in markets that are not demanding this.
This is why when I see a product on shelf and I have this, this is, this is a marketing lend trend.
This is not something that has been thought through.
And when I sit there at dinner tables and I present myself, I say I come from the palm industry.
I have to explain this, but I have a setting of a dinner table.
And have a couple of minutes to explain it and at the end people understand.
But most consumers have 3 2nd choices.
And they just follow whatever they've heard before and I don't blame them.
We're, we're, we're, we're in an, in, in a world of very short time attention to take little decisions.
It's not their job to know everything in the industry, but I think it is their responsibility of the food manufacturers to play a critical role in the decisions they take on the purchases that they make and the stories that they really are telling the consumers.
So what are the main points that you would want, you know, brands to know to be able to tell to the consumers about, you know, what makes this generation of palm producing different?
The message to the brand owners and the private label owners of the retailers should be not to shy away and not to hide palm in the ingredient list.
In our case, we're number one ranked in transparency worldwide.
And the reason why we've landed this is because we are a full open company to show you there's nothing to hide.
There's nothing wrong being done here.
Instead, it is one of the best crops and ingredients worldwide to use.
So why are we shameful?
Why are we not telling the story?
I think that this is more driven by the perception of lost sales, reputation and marketing but being derived from the mistakes done 25, 30 years ago.
Just because that occurred doesn't mean we cannot change.
Times change.
And many of us in the industry, not only our family business, have put the effort to change this, and I would see it very, very sad that the brands still neglect the idea that we can move forward, learn from this, and benefit from such a great crop.
