- A new investigative report alleges that the supply chain of one of the world’s largest producers of wood pulp and products, Royal Golden Eagle, is tainted with wood from deforestation in Indonesia.
- The allegation comes despite the company having adopted a no-deforestation policy since 2015.
- The report also reveals a chain of offshore shell companies pointing to RGE’s control of a new mega-scale pulp mill in Indonesia’s North Kalimantan province.
- This new mill threatens large-scale deforestation once it’s in operation, due to its huge demand for wood, the report says.
RGE is one of the world’s largest producers of wood pulp and the products that are made from it, including paper, tissue, packaging, and viscose rayon.
The report co-published by five environmental organizations alleges that RGE’s pulp and paper unit in China, Asia Symbol, received 1.5 million cubic meters (53 million cubic feet) of wood in 2021-2022 from nine pulpwood suppliers in Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo.
Using geospatial remote-sensing data from TheTreeMap, the report, titled “Pulping Borneo,” found that three of the nine suppliers had cleared a combined 37,105 hectares (91,688 acres) of natural forest in Kalimantan — an area more than half the size of Singapore — from 2016 to 2022.
The three suppliers are PT Industrial Forest Plantations (IFP) in Central Kalimantan province, PT Adindo Hutani Lestari (AHL) in North Kalimantan, and PT Fajar Surya Swadaya (FSS) in East Kalimantan.
IFP accounted for the largest deforested area, with 21,827 hectares (53,936 acres) of forest loss detected within its concession during that period. The company’s deforestation rate peaked at 6,790 hectares (16,778 acres) in 2022, the second-highest rate of forest loss among nearly 300 pulpwood concessions in Indonesia.
Report links paper giant RGE to Indonesia deforestation despite pledges