Unilever : How we’re using technology to help end deforestation

By combining tens of thousands of satellite images with geolocation data and applying artificial intelligence and scalable data science, this new system will give us unique insights by showing the predicted likelihood that a farm or plantation is supplying any given mill.

It's a step change from the current approach and it can model supply chain linkages at scale. We're now working with Orbital Insight to develop and finesse this into an operational methodology, and testing the technology at a small number of palm oil mills in Indonesia and soy mills in Brazil.

This approach brings a new level of sophistication to traceability - one that has the potential to work on a massive scale, for Unilever and the rest of the industry.

'Better monitoring helps all of us to understand what's happening within our supply chains,' says Marc Engel, Chief Supply Chain Officer. '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.'