Investigations have not found evidence to support Milieudefensie report allegations on serious sustainability violations within Neste's raw material supply chain

Neste Corporation, News, 20 January, 2021
 
In November 2020, the Dutch environmental organization Milieudefensie published a report “The Dark Side of Neste's biofuel production”. At that time, we published a statement on the report on our website.
 
Since the publication of our statement, we have continued to investigate the allegations in cooperation with our suppliers. Gathering enough information to make decisions is a time-consuming task, as some of the allegations relate to companies with which we have no direct contact. The collection of data requires action from several parties. 
 
No support for allegations on serious sustainability violations
 
So far, investigations have not found evidence to support the allegations that our raw material suppliers had caused deforestation equaling the area of Paris or committed other serious sustainability violations. We continue to investigate and monitor the progress of the investigations closely with our suppliers. Status of each case can be found in our November 2020 Grievance report. 
 
Monitoring of the cases continues
 
Ensuring sustainability is central to Neste and we are committed to continuously improve our sustainability performance. We do not accept any sustainability violations in our own operations or within our supply chains.
 
We take all allegations on suspected sustainability violations and shortcomings seriously and investigate the cases even when they are not directly related to our sourcing of raw materials but indirectly concern our suppliers, for example through their subsidiaries or owners. We openly publish information about grievance cases and our actions as soon as we have received sufficient information from the actors in our supply chain. We also actively monitor events outside our own supply chain and strive to support remediation measures.
 
All our contracts with raw material suppliers include strict terms on sustainability. We monitor adherence with external sustainability experts and through third-party audits.
 
If the investigations later reveal that the sustainability criteria and requirements included in our contracts with our suppliers have been verifiably breached and the nature of these is considered serious and progress to resolve those issues is not made in a reasonable time, we can terminate our contract with the supplier in question

Neste in brief

Neste (NESTE, Nasdaq Helsinki) creates solutions for combating climate change and accelerating a shift to a circular economy. We refine waste, residues and innovative raw materials into renewable fuels and sustainable feedstock for plastics and other materials. We are the world’s leading producer of renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel, developing chemical recycling to combat the plastic waste challenge. We aim at helping customers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with our renewable and circular solutions by at least 20 million tons annually by 2030. As a technologically advanced refiner of high-quality oil products with a commitment to reach carbon-neutral production by 2035, we are also introducing renewable and recycled raw materials such as waste plastic as refinery raw materials. We have consistently been included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices and the Global 100 list of the world’s most sustainable companies. In 2019, Neste's revenue stood at EUR 15.8 billion, with 82% of the company’s comparable operating profit coming from renewable products. Read more: neste.com