Oil palm under the EUDR

Most people scoping palm for the first time look up heading 1511, find palm oil and its fractions, and conclude the exercise is finished. It is not close to finished. Palm is the commodity where the regulation reaches furthest from the farm gate, through crushing and refining and into the oleochemical industry, and where the businesses most likely to be caught out do not think of themselves as buying an agricultural commodity at all. They think of themselves as buying stearic acid.

The second thing that makes palm distinctive is structural rather than legal. In every other commodity there is at least a theoretical chain of custody running back to a plot, however badly recorded. In palm, the first buyer of the crop is a mill that takes fresh fruit bunches from anyone who can deliver them within the few hours before the fruit degrades, and it does not know or need to know whose trees they came from. The traceability gap is not caused by poor bookkeeping. It is the operating model.

What is in scope

Read that list as an industry map rather than as customs codes and the reach becomes obvious. Heading 1511 is the food industry. 2306 60 is animal feed. 2905 45 is glycerol, which goes into pharmaceuticals, personal care and antifreeze. The 2915 and 3823 entries are the oleochemical backbone of soaps, surfactants, lubricants, candles, cosmetics and plastics additives. A European surfactant producer buying industrial fatty alcohols has been a relevant operator since the regulation was written, and a good number of them have only recently discovered it.

The July 2026 delegated act extends this pattern rather than changing it. Adding soap under ex 3401 20, together with further oleochemical derivatives, pulls in formulators who buy finished surfactant systems rather than raw oils. Those additions carry the deferred date of 30 December 2027, which for a cosmetics business starting from nothing is a realistic but not a comfortable runway.

Where the deforestation risk actually sits

Indonesia and Malaysia produce the large majority of the world's palm oil and both are classified standard risk. The expansion history that made palm politically salient — large-scale conversion of lowland tropical forest through the 1990s and 2000s — is mostly, though not entirely, before the regulation's cut-off, and that is the single most important thing to understand when reading palm risk results.

The EUDR asks one question about land: was it forest on 31 December 2020, and is it agricultural now. A plantation established in 2005 on land cleared from primary forest in 2004 is compliant. This is uncomfortable for anyone who came to palm through the deforestation debate, and it is the law. What the regulation catches is post-2020 conversion, and in mature palm landscapes that is concentrated in smallholder expansion at the edges of existing blocks and in replanting that creeps outward rather than staying inside the previous footprint.

The mill buys from a radius, not from a list

Fresh fruit bunches begin to degrade almost immediately after harvest, which fixes the geography of the whole industry. A mill draws from whatever is within a few hours' transport, and everything that arrives in a day is sterilised, threshed and pressed together. The crude palm oil that leaves has no plot identity, and the mill has no commercial reason to have created one.

The supply base therefore divides into two populations that need completely different handling. Company estates and plasma schemes are mapped, titled and often already have boundary files — polygon collection there is largely a matter of asking. Independent smallholders, who supply a substantial share of the fruit at most mills through agents and ramps, frequently hold two to four hectares, may hold it under customary rather than registered title, and appear in nobody's dataset.

That split maps almost exactly onto the four-hectare line: estates need polygons and can produce them; independent smallholders may supply points and cannot currently supply anything. And the same caution applies here as everywhere — a point is a claim about position with nothing to say about extent, and in a landscape where the risk is edge expansion, a centroid is precisely the geometry least likely to see it.

Where the chain mixes

The mill is the mixing point, and unlike cocoa's cooperative or coffee's washing station it cannot be moved or worked around. Cherry can in principle be kept in separate lots at a washing station. Fruit bunches cannot be kept separate through a steriliser and a press without rebuilding the mill.

What this means in practice is that palm compliance is done at the level of the mill's supply base rather than at the level of the consignment. The defensible position is not "this tonne of crude palm oil came from these plots" — it is "this crude palm oil came from this mill, and here is the complete, geolocated supply base of that mill for the relevant period". Building that supply-base register is the work. Every refinery, trader and oleochemical buyer downstream is then relying on it, which is why mill lists and their underlying plot data have become the central artefact of palm due diligence.

It also explains why palm is the commodity where certification schemes are most often mistaken for compliance. A mass-balance certificate describes a volume accounting relationship. It is genuinely useful as risk-mitigation evidence and it says nothing about the geolocation of any plot, which is what Article 9 asks for.

Risk assessment

Indonesia and Malaysia are both standard risk, which means full risk assessment under Article 10 and mitigation under Article 11 where risk is more than negligible. There is no simplified route for the origins that matter, and there is unlikely to be one soon. Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Papua New Guinea, Nigeria and Thailand cover most of the remainder; Thailand is low risk and the rest are standard.

Because the unit of analysis is the mill catchment rather than the consignment, palm risk assessment tends to produce a portfolio result rather than a pass or fail: a mill with four thousand mapped plots of which eleven show post-2020 clearance is the normal shape of an answer. What matters is then whether those eleven can be identified, excluded and documented — which is a mitigation and evidence exercise, and the reason the regulation asks for mitigation at all.

Filing the statement

The operator first placing the goods on the EU market files, and for palm that is usually the refinery, trader or oleochemical manufacturer importing oil or derivatives. Downstream formulators retain the reference number. Where a European oleochemical producer imports crude and sells derivatives onward within the Union, it is the import that triggers the statement.

The two dates need managing together. Everything already in Annex I applies from 30 December 2026. The soap and further derivative entries added in July 2026 apply from 30 December 2027. A business with both a food-grade oil line and a soap line will be filing against one supply base under two timetables, and the sensible response is to build the mill register once to the earlier date rather than to run the exercise twice.

How ERWAY handles oil palm

• Mills and estate groups are registered as suppliers and can upload their own supply-base geometry, which is the only workable shape for a commodity where the plot list belongs to the mill rather than to the buyer.
• Overlap detection between plots matters more in palm than anywhere else. Smallholder blocks mapped by different agents in different years routinely double-count the same land, and an overlapping pair inflates both the hectares under assessment and the apparent risk. It is one of the thirteen validation rules, reported with the overlapping area.
• Plot risk is scored against the JRC Global Forest Cover 2020 baseline with Hansen annual loss, GFW Integrated Alerts and OPERA DIST for the period since — which is the combination that distinguishes pre-cut-off conversion from post-2020 clearance, the distinction the whole palm risk question turns on.
• EFFIS fire data is intersected with the 2020 forest layer and the plot, so burned area is reported as burned forest rather than as burned anything.
• Sentinel-2 imagery per year from 2020 lets a flagged block be inspected — replanting inside an existing footprint looks very different from expansion across an edge, and a threshold alone will not tell them apart.
• Mitigation entries are recorded per polygon with documents attached: concession maps, revised boundary files, field audit reports. One saved entry marks the plot mitigated and keeps the evidence with it.

Common questions

Does it matter if the palm oil is used as biodiesel feedstock rather than food?

No — scope follows the customs classification of the product placed on the market, not its eventual use. Crude or refined palm oil classified under 1511 is a relevant product whether the buyer is a food manufacturer or a biodiesel producer. Fuel-specific sustainability rules under separate EU energy legislation apply on top of this, not instead of it.

Is coconut oil covered the same way as palm kernel oil?

No, even though the CN heading groups them together in its text. 1513 covers coconut (copra), palm kernel or babassu oil as a customs description, but Annex I names oil palm as the relevant commodity — coconut is not one of the seven, and coconut oil on its own is not a relevant product. Where a shipment is genuinely palm kernel or babassu oil it is in scope; a supplier invoice that just says '1513' without specifying which of the three oils it actually is needs following up before you can tell.

Are palm-derived products made from used cooking oil in scope?

Material that is genuine waste — collected used cooking oil that has completed its lifecycle, rather than material diverted from a manufacturing process — falls under the Annex I preamble's waste carve-out and is not covered. The distinction that matters is whether the input was actually discarded as waste under the EU's waste framework directive, not merely whether it is described as recycled or circular in marketing material.

What if my mill buys from thousands of smallholders and cannot map them all by the deadline?

The same logic applies as in cocoa: the obligation covers the plots behind the volume you actually place on the EU market, not your mill's entire historic supply base. Many palm buyers are managing this by directing EU-bound volume through the mapped share of a mill's catchment while the unmapped share is sold into markets without an equivalent requirement, and expanding the mapped share over successive seasons.

If crude palm oil is refined inside the EU, who has the filing obligation?

Whoever first placed the crude oil on the EU market by importing it — refining inside the Union afterwards does not create a new point of entry. A refiner processing already-imported crude covered by a valid statement is a downstream operator retaining the reference number, not a fresh filer; a refiner that itself imports crude oil directly is the operator that files.

Is palm kernel expeller used in animal feed covered?

Yes. Heading 2306 60 covers oilcake and other solid residues from the extraction of palm nut or kernel oils, which is exactly what palm kernel expeller is. Compound feed manufacturers and livestock businesses buying it are handling a relevant product on the same basis as soya meal buyers are for heading 2304.

Does RSPO or ISPO certification reduce what I have to collect for a mill's supply base?

It reduces none of the Article 9 collection duty and can meaningfully support the risk assessment built on top of it. A certified mill's supply base list, audit records and grievance mechanism are useful risk-mitigation evidence once you already hold plot geolocation — they are not a substitute for holding it, and a mill's certification status says nothing on its own about whether any individual member plot was cleared after 2020.

Does the July 2026 delegated act change anything for crude palm oil under 1511, which was already in scope?

No — 1511 was in Annex I from the outset and is unaffected by the July 2026 act, which only adds further downstream oleochemical derivatives and soap. Crude and refined palm oil under 1511 have carried the 30 December 2026 date throughout.

Are palm oil derivatives sold within the EU by an EU-based manufacturer, using EU-refined oil, still in scope?

The obligation attaches at the point a relevant product not yet covered by a due diligence statement enters the EU market — which for palm is normally the import of crude or kernel oil. A domestic sale between two EU businesses of oil that already carries a valid statement's reference number is a downstream transaction, not a fresh point of obligation.

Is palm oil used in animal feed covered under 1511 or a different code?

Straight palm oil used as a feed ingredient is still classified under 1511 like any other use of the oil — it is the oilcake and solid residue from extraction, not the oil itself, that has its own separate entry under 2306 60. A feed formulator may be handling both codes at once if it buys both the oil and the cake fraction.

What to do before December

1. 1

   Scope by customs code, not by self-image

   Search your import declarations for 2905 45, 2915 70, 2915 90 and the 3823 series before assuming palm is not your problem. The oleochemical entries catch businesses that have never bought a tonne of oil.

2. 2

   Build a mill register, not a consignment trail

   Plot-to-consignment traceability does not survive the press. The defensible artefact is a complete, geolocated supply base per mill for the relevant period, and everything downstream leans on it.

3. 3

   Separate the estates from the independents

   Estate polygons usually exist already and can be collected in weeks. Independent smallholder plots need fieldwork. Treating them as one programme means the easy half moves at the speed of the hard half.

4. 4

   Stop testing for peat and start testing for 2020 forest

   Peat status and NDPE conformance are worth knowing and are not what this regulation asks. Point the analysis at forest cover on 31 December 2020 and at legality of production, and keep the other commitments in their own reporting line.

Palm rewards precision about what the regulation actually says. Its scope is wider than almost anyone assumes and its deforestation test is narrower — a lot of the sector's history sits before the cut-off, and a lot of the sector's exposure sits in chemical codes that never mention a tree. Getting both halves right at once is the difference between a programme that finds the eleven plots that matter and one that spends a year auditing the wrong thing.

Published August 17, 2026 · Last reviewed August 17, 2026 against the sources listed above.