The Responsible Sourcing team at IOI Corporation Berhad ("IOI") is happy to share that in the recent 2 months, two of our suppliers have adopted a NDPE policy. We have been engaging closely with these suppliers during the past year providing support and the first one is making good progress by putting in place new resources and budgets to support their commitments. We will continue to expand our efforts to engage and support transformation of our supply chain with a host of activities and programmes.

Firstly, there will be a 18 months collaboration with Earthworm Foundation (EF) where the roll out of Tools for Transformation (T4T) will continue, as a consistent engagement platform to reach out to all third party suppliers to our refineries in Sabah (IOI Edible Oil Sdn Bhd ) and in Peninsula Malaysia (IOI Pan Century Edible Oils Sdn Bhd). Our suppliers can thus report status of operations against NDPE metrics, formulate time bound action plans and update on progress made.

Furthermore, in line with a development of refineries’ time bound action plans / implementation roadmaps, improvement of practices within our supply chain will be further supported through workshops and one on one mill engagements. Concurrently, we will organise a focused workshop with our prioritised suppliers covering No deforestation, No Peat (NDP) and No Exploitation (No Ex). Our objective is to share information on HCS/HCV to safeguard the natural environment, mitigate the risk of labor exploitation and address concerns of children living in the plantation particularly those with limited access to education. EF will support this event by providing specific guidance on social and labour practice improvements.

The one on one engagements with a selection of third party suppliers will also take place where IOI will continue to socialise on NDPE values to eliminate potential deforestation and to improve labour practices at mill and plantation level. Specific guidance will be provided to support improved labour practices, minimize the risk of exploitation and ensure adequate monitoring activities or review processes are in place.

Lastly, we are also monitoring land use change through Aidenvironment as well as working closely with several of our buyers through their usage of the Starling platform as a check for any potential NDP non-compliance issues of our supply shed.

*More information on T4T and Starling can be found via https://toolsfortransformation.net/ and http://www.starling-verification.com/