Felda Global Ventures (FGV) – Felda Global Ventures (FGV) – popup

As a member of the RSPO, we respect the RSPO Complaints procedure and we will act in accordance with any decision made by the Complaints Panel of the RSPO.

We decided to resume trade relations with FGV after determining their commitment towards publishing an action plan.

We engaged with Greenpeace via email and informed that we have applied a controlled purchase condition from October 2015 – May 2016 and started the purchase from May 2016 – November 2016.

The document lists all the actions which have been undertaken to address the allegation and timelines.

The progress report can be found here.

FGV published a statement regarding the RSPO decision letter here, affirming their compliance to all of RSPO’s Principles and Criteria by taking several immediate measures to address all the issues raised.

On 14 December, FGV published its report on its progress in Serting Estates that is the subject of the RSPO’s investigations.

24 June 2019:

Grant & Eisenhofer ESG Institute sent a petition titled, “Grant & Eisenhofer ESG Institute Petitions US Government to Block Importation of Palm Oil Produced by FGV Holdings Berhad in Malaysia, Based on Evidence of Child and Forced Labor Practices” to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for a ban on importation of palm oil produced by FGV due to widespread evidence of forced labour and illegal child labour practices within their plantations.

26 June 2019:

FGV published a response to Grant & Eisenhofer’s petition on their website on the 26 June 2019. FGV stressed that the issues raised in the petition were since 2015 and that they have taken the necessary actions to correct the non-compliances raised. The response includes the Quarterly Progress Report of the Action Plan implementation.

The discussion was with regards to the Grant & Eisenhofer’s petition and FGV’s action plan and implementation progress as well as other initiatives that FGV is planning to take to ensure all the action plans are implemented progressively.

RSPO published a letter to announce the Complaints Panel decision to lift the suspension on FGV’s Serting Complex as FGV had fulfilled the major conditions set out by the Complaints Panel.

RSPO closed the case on 05 August 2019.

FGV also published a statement on their website on RSPO’s decision to lift the suspension on their Serting Complex. The statement by FGV can be found here.

International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF), Rainforest Action Network and SumOfUs petition titled, “NGOs Call on US Customs to Block Import of Forced Labour Palm Oil”.

NGOS petitioned to US CBP for a ban on importation of palm oil produced by FGV due the labour and human rights issues and called for global brands to publicly cut ties with FGV.

FGV, together with Procter & Gamble (P&G) will be undertaking a long-term collaboration with international civil society groups to improve on labour standards and human rights. P&G released a statement on their support for the project on their website and their statement can be found here.

Kilang Sawit Serting is entered into the Musim Mas Controlled Purchase Protocol as of 21 January 2020, and FGV have been so informed.

As per our CPP, we are deferring to the RSPO process, and will follow closely the developments of the case.

Following the conditional lifting of the suspension of FGV’s Kilang Sawit Serting and its supply bases in August 2019, the Certification Bodies (CB) were instructed to carry out verification audits on six different FGV units. The audits results have been found to be unsatisfactory, and non-compliances were noted.

The RSPO Secretariat is required to instruct the CB to re-suspend FGV’s P&C certificate for Kilang Sawit Serting and its supply bases, and to suspend all certification processes for the uncertified management unit within FGV, effective 13 January 2020. Lifting of the suspension are conditional upon FGV’s satisfactory implementation of the CP’s decision.

The other 34 RSPO-certified manangement units of FGV remain certified.

RSPO published a statement regarding CP’s decision on FGV Holdings here.

The appeal letter highlighted three main points, which you may refer to here:

• the circumstances out of which this appeal arise from;
• the issues arising in the FGV appeal; and
• the contentions and arguments raised by FGV and their reasons.

In it, they stated that the decision to re-suspend the Serting Mill Complex was vague, and for RSPO to consider that their work and efforts to implement measures and corrective actions takes time. FGV contended that several non-compliances identified were found in complexes that were not ready for auditing. They also stated that they have maintained full transparency at all times, and have been publishing their progress reports to RSPO as requested, however several directives have been held back due to COVID-19 restrictions.

RSPO also gave the approval to FGV to submit an updated timeline of deadlines which have been affected by the pandemic, within 30 days of the letter. This was taking into consideration of FGV’s previous appeal stating that Covid-19 pandemic has affected the implementation of the Complaints Panel Decision.

FGV also submitted the updated timeline of directives that were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic to RSPO for their review. Two activities that FGV indicated was affected was that of:

1. Regularisation of workers in Sabah – expected date of completion by end of December 2020
2. New housing for workers – expected date of completion by end of December 2020

The same day, the US-headquartered non-profit group, Fair Labor Association (FLA), released a progress report about FGV, which showed genuine progress and detailed coming milestones. The progress report can be found here.

As part of their commitments to fulfilling the rights of workers to adequate housing, FGV invested RM350 million over the past three years, to build and upgrade housing facilities for its plantation workers, which can be referred to here. FGV also detailed their commitment to respecting child rights and their right to education by taking the initiative to invest RM5 million in establishing 11 Community Learning Centres (CLC) in Sabah. The statement can be found here.

FGV have been continuously showing their commitment to respecting human rights and upholding labour standards. In December, they released statement to declare that they will allocate RM5.6 million per year for a health facility for its 28,000 migrant workers, in a bid to ensure all employees on its plantations have access to health rights. They also committed to ensuring that all workers whose contracts have been completed were provided with a safe passage home, with costs of their return covered by FGV, the statement can be found here.