The news broke while Greenpeace activists were still being detained by police after taking direct action to halt the operations of the supplier involved – Asia Pacific Resources International Holding Limited (APRIL).
UPM, a Finnish-owned company which supplies products like photocopier paper to markets including Europe, the US and China, announced late last night that it had “decided to terminate its pulp purchase contract with APRIL.”
Greenpeace estimates that APRIL’s contract with UPM was worth $55m annually, or over 4% of APRIL’s total pulp production.
Reacting to the news, Greenpeace forests campaign Ian Duff said: “This decision shows that forest crime doesn’t pay. UPM have taken a really progressive step by cancelling their contracts with APRIL, and we’re seeing more and more companies taking their environmental responsibilities seriously and that can only be a good thing. Greenpeace will keep shining a spotlight on the worst offenders but we will also give credit to companies who make the right choices.”
50 Greenpeace activists occupied heavy machinery on an APRIL concession on the Kampar peninsular in Indonesia yesterday, and accused the company of clearing carbon rich peatlands to make way for pulp and paper plantations. The environmental group says this is contributing to the country’s status as the third largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world.
Earlier this week, Greenpeace released fresh evidence, including aerial surveillance images that prove APRIL is destroying areas of rainforest and draining forest peatland on Sumatra’s threatened Kampar Peninsula. The evidence also strongly indicates that the company is clearing forest on peat which is more than three metres deep. This is illegal under Indonesian law.
Yesterday, activists from Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Brazil and Finland shut down APRIL’s operations in the heart of the Indonesian rainforest on the island of Sumatra. They locked themselves to seven machines used to clear vast tracts of forest and peatland for conversion to pulp wood plantations.