Unilever plans to use phones to track sustainable palm oil

The maker of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Dove soap will use cell phone geo-location data to track palm oil moving across thousands of supply chains and to achieve the elusive “first-mile” traceability.

CALIFORNIA: Unilever is planning to use new geo-location technology to make its palm oil supply chains more transparent and tackle a farm-to-table traceability problem that has plagued the industry for decades.

The maker of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Hellmann’s mayonnaise and Dove soap will use cell phone geo-location data to track palm oil moving across thousands of supply chains and to achieve the elusive “first-mile” traceability.

After a pilot test in Indonesia, Unilever is scaling up that approach to cover all palm facilities in South-East Asia, including farms, refineries and processing plants, and is looking into whether the technology can be applied to other regions.