Palm-oil fast facts
What is palm oil?
Palm oil is a vegetable oil with a growing share of growing worldwide demand for vegetable oil. It is the world’s most popular vegetable oil and its most traded: 79.3 million tonnes were produced in 2024.
Global vegetable-oil consumption
(tonnes million)
How is palm oil produced?
Oil palms produce fresh fruit bunches (ffb) continuously over their 25-year life. Competing vegetable oil seeds are annual crops. Palm is grown +/-5º of the equator.
Fresh fruit bunches are steamed and then squeezed to yield crude palm oil. Separately, a nut is extracted from the fruit kernel and pressed to produce palm kernel oil (PKO).
Main producers of palm oil in 2024
How are palm oil and palm kernel oil used?
Approximately half of products found in a UK supermarket contain palm oil or PKO, including shampoos, cosmetics, ice cream, biscuits, chocolate and cereals. See more information on our Health FAQS page.
Is palm oil efficient?
Palm is extremely efficient in land use: 3.3 tonnes of oil per hectare. It produces approximately 40% of the world’s vegetable oil on less than 8% of the area devoted to vegetable-oil cultivation.
Vegetable-oil yield per hectare
(tonnes)
Is palm oil bad for you?
On balance there is no evidence to support assertions that palm oil is associated with adverse nutritional outcomes in humans. Growing production of palm oil has reduced human consumption of harmful trans fats.
Can palm oil be sustainable?
Yes. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (“RSPO”) has established standards for sustainable palm oil production, aiming to ensure that palm oil is grown in a way that protects the environment, respects communities, and promotes social responsibility.
The RSPO was established in 2004 with diverse membership:
- Environmental pressure groups: eg Oxfam, ZSL;
- Global bodies: eg WWF; WRI;
- Leading FMGC groups and retailers: eg Nestle; Modelez; Carrefour, Sainsbury’s; Bayer; Danone; L’Oréal;
- Banks: IFC; Rabobank; HSBC;
- Palm oil growers and traders.
To become RSPO certified, palm oil producers must adhere to a set of principles and criteria, requiring them to:
- Behave ethically and transparently
- Operate legally and respect human rights
- Optimise productivity, efficiency, positive impacts and resilience
- Respect communities and human rights, and deliver benefits
- Support smallholder inclusion
- Respect workers’ rights and provide safe working conditions
- Protect, conserve and enhance ecosystems and the environment
Compliance is independently audited, and members need to undergo annual audits to maintain their certificate and ensure continued compliance with the RSPO standards.
Is palm oil sustainable now?
20%
of the world’s palm oil is currently produced as RSPO sustainable palm oil (CSPO).
As the latest data from the RSPO Secretariat reveals, CSPO accounts for 20% of global palm oil production, even though RSPO certified areas represent 12.4% of the global oil palm planted area. This difference highlights the higher yields and productivity achieved by RSPO members.
The total volume of CSPO sold as RSPO certified has steadily increased, reaching 66% of CSPO production. The remaining 34% of CSPO supply is sold as ISCC-certified volumes or as conventional palm oil without sustainability claims.
Is it sensible to avoid or ban palm oil?
“Oil palm is highly efficient. Simply using another type of oil might take up more land leading to more deforestation. We may be able to protect [our forest relatives] through simple choices, like buying products from deforestation-free sustainable palm oil from companies that support local people using existing plantations without cutting down more rainforest.”
Sir David Attenborough, 2019
Operational excellence
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