Unilever has launched a pilot program in collaboration with Orbital Insight that uses geolocation data to help identify the individual farms and plantations that are most likely to be supplying the palm oil mills in its extended supply chain. This will allow the consumer goods giant to get a clearer picture of where harvested crops are coming from, even down to individual fields. In addition, the technology will also help predict the possibility of issues such as deforestation, and to take action where required.
“Orbital Insight and Unilever are pioneering the digital-first approach to supply chain visibility starting with Indonesian palm oil, showing how geolocation technology can uncover the hidden structure of supply chains,” says Dr James Crawford, Founder and CEO of Orbital Insight.
Orbital insight’s analysis of aggregated and anonymized GPS data helps spot traffic patterns by identifying the areas where there is a consistent flow of traffic between an area of land and a mill and suggesting a “potential link” between the mills and the farms or plantations that supply them in order to get real “ground truth”.
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“Better monitoring helps all of us to understand what’s happening within our supply chains,” says Marc Engel, Unilever’s Chief Supply Chain Officer. “With a clearer picture, it’s easier to estimate the risk of issues, such as deforestation. We want to be the first to know, and the first to act.”
The new technology
While satellite technology has been playing an important role in monitoring land-use changes, often times the images alone aren’t enough. Traditional supply chain traceability involves taking a satellite image of an area known for palm oil mills and drawing a 50-km radius around it. The farms within that catchment area are assumed to be direct suppliers. While this has been a practice over the past years, Unilever wanted to improve upon it for more precise monitoring.
Orbital Insight had the technology which could provide a more objective and real-time approach. Being tested at a small number of palm oil mills in Indonesia and soy mills in Brazil, The technology uses geolocation monitoring through mobile phone network data to identify individual farms and plantations supplying the third party mills in Unilever’s supply chain network. Anonymized GPS signals are able to provide point-to-point movements of trucks, showing the direct supplier linkages at a scale that has never been possible before. Satellite imagery analysis can then show historical and ongoing deforestation monitoring to ensure an ethical supply chain.
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“Real-time, granular visibility is critical for the future of our natural resources, and this is a traceability methodology that can scale for the industry and for NGOs thanks to the power of AI,” explains Dr Crawford.
One can follow the data to learn more about the upstream sources, to gain a data-driven “line of sight” to crop origin even with long and complex commodity supply chains. Armed with these location tracks, Unilever uses data to predict where an individual mill is likeliest to be sourcing from, allowing it insights from sourcing patterns to palm plantations at scale. After this, satellite data is used to monitor those plantations across the entire supply chain. The process also enables it to evaluate the primary risks and impacts associated with palm across the entire supply base.
The new approach bring a new level of sophistication to traceability, and has the potential to work on a larger massive scale, not only for Unilever, but for the rest of the industry.
Unilever’s sustainability focus
The pilot is another step for Unilever towards building a digital ecosystem for monitoring its supply chain even more closely. It was the first consumer goods company to publish a full list of palm oil suppliers and third-party mills in its supply chain. It is also the only one to publish a public grievance report so that issues associated its our direct and indirect palm oil suppliers can be identified and acted on.
It has for some time being satellite technology to monitor the raw materials used to make its products. It has a partnership Aidenvironment to evolve its oil palm concession mapping platform. It is also part of the consortium of companies that are part of World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch developing radar monitoring technology to detect deforestation in near real-time and with greater accuracy.
“By companies coming together and using cutting-edge technology to carefully monitor our forests, we can all get closer to achieving our collective goal of ending deforestation,” Engel adds.
