Title: Creating sustainable supply chain for palm oil

Authors: Indra Thangavelu; Choy Leong Yee

Addresses: Faculty Economics and Management, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia ' Faculty Economics and Management, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

Abstract: Palm oil is a key commodity in the oil and fat sector and sustainability of the supply chain can only be achieved with buyers and sellers engaging in appropriate practices. Sustainability centric sellers allocate resources and change processes for sustainable productions whilst buyers arrest opportunistic behaviours and look beyond profit. Private and public bodies render governance of the chain by developing generally accepted sustainable standards, encourage compliance reporting and provide alternative dispute resolution platform. Hence, the conceptual model for creation of sustainable supply chain for palm oil is made of sellers, buyers and governance anchored by the underpinning mitigation of risk theory. As the downstream palm oil supply chain is extensive, used for food and non-food, the sustainable practices need to be focused at the plantations and procurement of crude oil. The findings reveal that sustainable supply chain can only be achieved with the integrated effort of sellers, buyers and the private-public governance as dictated by market dynamism.

Keywords: sustainable production; sustainable procurement; supply chain governance; sustainable palm oil; multi-stakeholder governance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSAMI.2017.085653

International Journal of Sustainable Agricultural Management and Informatics, 2017 Vol.3 No.2, pp.103 - 124

Received: 11 Sep 2016
Accepted: 15 Dec 2016
Published online: 05 Aug 2017 *

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