We manage our forest landscapes in line with our sustainability policies and commitments to ensure no deforestation throughout our supply chain.
APRIL continues to uphold our no deforestation commitment as of the 3 June 2015 cut-off date in our Sustainable Forest Management Policy 2.0 (SFMP 2.0). This commitment aligns with emerging regulatory frameworks, including the EU Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR).
We pledge no development in high conservation value (HCV) forests and high carbon stock (HCS) areas, ensuring their protection is part of our integrated landscape management approach. These commitments apply to our entire supply chain.
Our integrated Production-Protection approach considers economic, social, and environmental goals in the pursuit of sustainable forest management. Our approach entails protecting High Conservation Value (HCV) areas and enhancing ecosystem integrity and biodiversity, while promoting economic growth and job creation through sustainable plantations. Within this model, we strive toward conserving a hectare of forest for every hectare of sustainably managed plantation—to date, we’ve reached a completion rate of around 80% against this 1-for-1 commitment.
Our Production-Protection approach to sustainable forest management balances economic, social, and environmental considerations. It enables us to protect High Conservation Value (HCV) areas that strengthen ecosystem-wide integrity and biodiversity, while simultaneously stimulating economic growth through sustainable plantation production. Job creation across our land bank builds more prosperous local communities, while dedicated conservation areas are sheltered by our plantation forests, which act as a buffer zone to safeguard against any potential encroachment or illegal activity.
Within our land bank, over 40,000 hectares of our licensed concessions are used for our livelihood plantations programme, run in partnership with local communities. Here, community members earn revenue for each harvest rotation of commercial Acacia and Eucalyptus plantations. Some of these areas are used for rubber and oil palm plantations, with community members marketing these sustainably harvested crops. Beyond cultivating and selling timber and non-timber forest products, community members are also able to grow crops in these concessions, contributing to food security.
We are passionate about exploring ways to sustainably and ethically boost fibre yields without expanding our plantation footprint. This is what our R&D team is tasked with: helping us increase fibre plantation productivity by 50% by 2030, to meet an important target in our Thriving Landscapes commitment. The team explores ways to adopt site-specific management plans that leverage Silviculture to optimise tree health and Precision Forestry, where advanced technologies enable us to gather site-specific data. We also boost productivity through an Integrated Pest and Disease Management strategy and Genetic Improvement work focused on ethically breeding Eucalyptus and Acacia trees with desirable genetic traits.
We are on track with our target for advancing tropical peatland science. This success is a result of strategic partnerships we’ve established with scientific communities, universities, and think tanks, and the advisory assistance that the Independent Peat Expert Working Group (IPEWG) delivers. The target is also being driven by our long-term research on topics such as peatland hydrology, and through our continued investment in digitalisation. Our digital transformation has unlocked new levels of efficient data management because all our field data is now systematically captured using digital tools, giving us better insight into site-specific needs. Examples of this in practice include our use of Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) to generate a map for land preparation and harvesting, micro-planning, landscape-level drainage planning, and flood-risk identification.
We only source from responsibly managed forests—and this applies to all the wood, virgin fibre, pulp, and biomass we harvest from our own forests and those of the third-party suppliers. Responsibly managed forests are those that are protected from illegal activities, run in accordance with legal and customary land rights, and uphold global frameworks such as the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, and the fundamental conventions of the International Labour Organisation. Additionally, we’re able to trace all wood and fibre sources to their originating forest management unit (FMU). To date, All Indonesian-based supplies (99% of our total supply) are fully traceable to the FMU level.
High conservation value (HCV) forests must be protected at all costs, which is why we are vigilant in supplier onboarding. All suppliers are subject to HCV Assessments to ensure that our supply chain is kept deforestation-free. We do not use wood that has been harvested in HCV areas, or areas converted from natural forest to plantation or non-forest use. To ensure compliance is ongoing, we leverage our land-cover-change satellite system to monitor suppliers’ land for signs of deforestation and ecosystem conversion. As another assurance of responsible sourcing, our wood supply is either certified with PEFC or meets government sustainable forest management standards, ensuring there is no material from controversial sources.
All suppliers must comply with our Wood & Fibre Sourcing Policy—like us, they commit to obligations such as protection and conservation of forested areas and responsible peatland management. In the event of policy breaches, we constructively engage the supplier to resolve and prevent further non-compliances through a corrective action plan. We track the implementation and results of these plans, using a robust and transparent monitoring mechanism.
All APRIL and supplier concessions are monitored for deforestation through satellite imagery and drones for aerial observation. Our on-the-ground verification teams identify, verify, and document land cover changes. Our remote sensing analysts conduct surveys every 16 days to detect instances of land cover change. This covers our entire managed area for APRIL and supply partners entities, and those of our open market suppliers on a spot check basis.
