The Wilmar group is one of the largest oil palm companies in the world and handles about a quarter of global palm oil output. One of the multiple companies under its management is PT Wilmar Sambas Plantation (PT WSP) (95% owned by the family of Wilmar’s CEO). In 2005, PT WSP started clearing land in Senujuh without the knowledge or permission of the community, and without yet having obtained a legal permit. The company destroyed rubber agro-forests belonging to the community . The clearance continued despite community protests to local leaders. In 2006, villagers stopped thirty company workers, and confiscated an excavator and five chainsaws used by the workers to clear the community forest. Together with members of the local parliament and the Forestry Department, village officials wrote a letter to the company asking it to remove its workers and equipment from Senujuh. The company manager apologised, and the communities returned the land clearing equipment. The company also paid a fine determined by customary law [2]. However, further land clearing reportedly took place. In 2006, a complaint against PT WSP was lodged by local NGOs alerted by villagers for the burning of land for plantation development. To encourage the district attorney to pursue the case, local students from Sambas staged a peaceful demonstration in support of the NGOs. In response, the prosecutor’s office replied that it was committed to taking the case to the highest level if the sentence of the district court in Singakawang was deemed too light. In 2007, 516 villagers signed a public statement asking for all oil palm expansion to be stopped in their villages and expressing disappointment that their village head had given consent without consulting the community.

(last among the 500 largest publicly traded companies in the world).

Wilmar is controlled by Indonesian and Singaporean businessmen, with representation on its board by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) one of the world’s top commodities trading companies. ADM and Wilmar have formed a strategic partnership, including tropical oils refining in Europe (sold and marketed through Olenex. C.V. based in Switzerland). Wilmar does not state in its public reports where it sells its biodiesel, but it is clear from recent anti-dumping measures taken by the EU that a substantial amount of Wilmar’s production is sold in Europe.

Research by Friends of the Earth International has highlighted the US and European financiers of Wilmar, including shareholders and banks that make loans to the company. These include: UK high-street banks Barclays and HSBC, PNB Parisbas and Credit Agricole (France), Deutsche Bank (Germany), APB and Rabobank (Netherlands) and Bank of America, J Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and others in the US, as well as Canadian, Swiss and Belgian institutions.

FoE also notes that the Norwegian Pension Fund (GPFG) withdrew its investment in Wilmar in 2012, along with 22 other palm oil companies, because it believed those companies were producing palm oil unsustainably and causing seriously adverse human rights impacts. [3][4]