07 Aug RSPO’s prisma Initiative: A Comprehensive Approach to Traceability in the Palm Oil Industry
Snapshot
- Palm oil traceability is essential for sustainability and regulatory compliance, especially in light of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which mandates that companies demonstrate their products are not linked to deforestation starting from 2026.
- Despite growing pressure, implementing end-to-end traceability across the palm oil supply chain remains difficult due to its fragmentation, data privacy concerns, and lack of interoperable systems among stakeholders.
- To address this gap, the Singapore Agri-Food Innovation Lab (SAIL) facilitated a partnership between the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and Agridence, a Singapore-based startup that had previously built a successful traceability platform for the rubber industry.
- Agridence adapted its technology for palm oil, working closely with RSPO to address the sector’s unique complexities, including granular product flows, diverse stakeholders, and the need for strict data security and regulatory alignment.
- The result of this collaboration is prisma, a unified Certification, Trade, and Traceability System (CTTS) launched in February 2025. prisma integrates modules for entity management, supply chain traceability, certification tracking, and geospatial risk assessment—all within a secure and scalable digital platform.
- By enabling RSPO Members to demonstrate compliance with RSPO standards and evolving global regulations like the EUDR, prisma represents a critical step toward industry-wide sustainability and supply chain transparency in palm oil.
The Palm Oil Traceability Challenge
Palm oil is an essential commodity, ubiquitous in food, cosmetics, and biofuels. Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia and Malaysia, accounts for around 85% of global production, making it a vital contributor to regional economies. However, the industry’s growth has fuelled environmental concerns, putting the sector under increasing scrutiny.
Palm oil production is often linked to deforestation, habitat destruction, and biodiversity loss. The expansion of plantations into forested areas has triggered widespread environmental degradation. These environmental concerns not only affect ecosystems but also intensify pressure on the industry to adopt more sustainable practices.
Traceability offers a practical solution to mitigating environmental damage by enabling companies to monitor the source of their palm oil. With comprehensive supply chain transparency, businesses can verify the origins of raw materials, ensuring they comply with sustainability standards. Traceability helps track environmental impacts, such as deforestation, and strengthens accountability throughout the supply chain.
The urgency to implement traceability has surged, driven by new regulations like the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). Starting from 30 December 2025,[1] companies exporting to the European Union will face strict requirements to demonstrate that their products are not linked to deforestation. European Union is the world’s third-largest importer of palm oil, accounting for 10% of the global demand. For palm oil producers, especially those exporting to the EU, compliance with these regulations is essential to maintain market access. This regulatory push is accelerating the industry’s needs to enhance traceability systems.
Despite its benefits, implementing end-to-end traceability in palm oil supply chains remains a daunting challenge. The complexity of the supply chain—with numerous smallholder farmers, large estates, and intermediaries—makes data collection difficult. Upstream actors often lack the necessary infrastructure for digital traceability, while downstream actors face barriers in accessing reliable information. Moreover, concerns around data privacy and competitive advantage have hindered collaboration, further complicating the effort to implement industry-wide traceability systems.
Collaborating with RSPO for Industry-Wide Traceability
Recognising the critical need for effective traceability in the palm oil sector, the Singapore Agri-Food Innovation Lab (SAIL) stepped in as a catalyst for innovation. SAIL’s role extends beyond traditional facilitation; it actively engages stakeholders to foster meaningful partnerships that address industry-wide challenges.
In 2022, SAIL organised a Roundtable focused on traceability, involving its palm oil Corporate Partners to develop a deeper understanding of the pain points involved. SAIL identified that while many large agri-food companies had developed proprietary traceability systems, these individual solutions often fell short in ensuring participation from key stakeholders for achieving end-to-end traceability due to several reasons. Firstly, participating companies were unable to share critical information in proprietary systems, which hindered holistic visibility across the supply chain. Secondly, proprietary systems often lacked uniformity, making it difficult to compare data or ensure compliance across the industry. Finally, each company building and operating in-house systems implied redundant data collection and wasted resources.
This reinforced the need for comprehensive industry-wide collaboration for advancing sustainability through traceability. SAIL recognised the need to partner with an organisation with broad industry trust that could lead such an ambitious endeavour. This was necessary to account for the diverse and often divergent perspectives, priorities, and incentives of stakeholders.
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) emerged as that ideal partner. Established in 2004, RSPO is a global, multi-stakeholder organisation committed to promoting the sustainable production of palm oil. With over 6,000 members worldwide, including producers, processors, retailers, and NGOs, RSPO develops and implements global standards for sustainable palm oil certification. Most of SAIL’s Corporate Partners in the palm oil industry are also RSPO Members, which created a natural synergy to drive collective efforts towards enhanced traceability. Given its industry-wide credibility and leadership in promoting sustainability, RSPO was uniquely positioned to spearhead the transformation of traceability systems across the palm oil sector.
At the same time, RSPO was also seeking to revamp its existing traceability and certification systems to address ongoing challenges. With the impending EUDR amplifying the urgency for enhanced traceability, the convergence of interests between SAIL and RSPO created a unique opportunity. RSPO became an Affiliate Partner of SAIL, setting the stage for collaborative efforts to enhance traceability in the palm oil sector.
“Our collaboration with SAIL came at a timely moment as we sought suitable partners to advance our traceability initiative,” said Hun Sung Yen, Director, Standards and Sustainability at RSPO. “By harnessing SAIL’s expertise in agri-food technological innovations, we were hoping to better align our efforts to drive sustainability across the industry. This synergy was strengthened our shared commitment to leveraging innovative solutions to enhance transparency and accountability in the palm oil supply chain.”
Agridence: Applying Proven Solutions from Rubber to Palm Oil
With a strategic partnership with RSPO in place, SAIL began scouting for promising traceability solutions to meet the needs of the palm oil industry. Key traits included trust and participation from supply chain actors, data privacy, and scalability. However, most existing solutions in the agri-food sector fell short in one or more of these areas. Realising that palm oil could benefit from successful examples in other industries, SAIL identified Agridence as an outlier.
Agridence (formerly HeveaConnect), a Singaporean agritech startup founded in 2018, had developed a robust traceability platform for the natural rubber industry, gaining significant traction with major players like plantation companies, traders, and tire manufacturers. Agridence’s success was driven in part by having strategic investors such as Halcyon Agri (the world’s largest natural rubber supply chain manager), DBS (Asia’s leading financial services group), the Singapore Exchange (SGX), and ITOCHU Corporation (a 150-year-old Japanese trading giant).
One of Agridence’s key advantages, which attracted SAIL, was its partnership with the Singapore Exchange (SGX) to securely store sensitive trade data. Agridence’s ISO 27001 certification ensures the highest standards of data security and privacy, fostering confidence among users. “Data security and privacy is fundamental in our business,” remarked Sebastian Wijaya, Chief Operating Officer at Agridence. “By working with the Singapore Exchange, we assure our stakeholders that their sensitive information is protected, enabling greater transparency and trust across the supply chain.”
Recognising its potential, SAIL facilitated an introduction between Agridence and RSPO. Agridence’s experience in natural rubber, coupled with their technical expertise and eagerness to expand into new sectors, positioned them perfectly to adapt their platform to the palm oil industry, where similar traceability challenges existed, but on a much larger scale. As a result of this introduction, Agridence eventually won a tender to lead a consortium tasked with developing a unified and optimised system that integrates certification, trade, and traceability into a seamless end-to-end platform for RSPO stakeholders, ensuring enhanced trade and regulatory compliance.
Innovation Journey: Adapting and Scaling for a Complex Industry
Building on its success in the rubber sector, Agridence faced a new set of challenges in tailoring its traceability platform to meet the needs of the palm oil industry. The journey to develop RSPO’s unified certification and traceability platform required more than a simple reapplication of an existing solution—it demanded deep technical adaptation, a commitment to scalability, and close collaboration with RSPO and its diverse stakeholders.
One of the most significant hurdles was the sheer complexity and granularity of the palm oil supply chain, which includes more intermediate processing steps and a broader range of derivative products than rubber. To address this, Agridence worked closely with RSPO to enhance the platform’s capabilities, including the ongoing development of a dynamic product scheme that can accommodate the evolving nature of palm oil processing and trade.
Data privacy and trust, foundational to Agridence’s earlier platform, remained non-negotiable. Leveraging industry best practices and its ISO 27001-compliant Information Security Management System (ISMS), Agridence applied the same rigorous standards—access controls, secure development practices, and operational safeguards—to the new platform. At the same time, RSPO’s longstanding role as a trusted steward of industry data added an additional layer of confidence among supply chain actors.
To support scalability and efficiency, Agridence streamlined processes and embedded new technologies into the platform architecture. One such innovation was the introduction of virtual bank accounts in the invoice management system, simplifying payment reconciliation and reducing administrative friction for users across the chain.
Throughout development, collaboration with RSPO was key—particularly in ensuring the platform was inclusive and accessible to smallholders and smaller companies. RSPO’s member-driven approach to decision-making and consensus-building allowed the platform to reflect the practical realities of diverse user groups while upholding high standards of assurance.
Finally, the project was shaped by the urgency of EUDR compliance requirements. To stay on track, Agridence had to make strategic decisions about feature prioritisation and phasing. This included engaging directly with regulatory bodies to understand evolving expectations and avoid costly missteps.
Transforming Palm Oil Traceability with prisma
Unveiled in February 2025, prisma—short for Palm Resource Information and Sustainability Management—is the culmination of a nearly two years-long collaboration between RSPO, Agridence, and their partners to build a next-generation Certification, Trade, and Traceability System (CTTS) for the palm oil industry. Purpose-built for a highly complex and closely scrutinised sector, the platform brings together key sustainability, regulatory, and assurance functions into one unified system. Its modular design and integrated architecture aim to help RSPO Members simplify compliance, streamline supply chain operations, and enhance transparency across global markets.
The following functions form the foundation of prisma, each addressing a core need within the palm oil supply chain.
Entity Management
For organisations operating in the palm oil sector, keeping track of their operations and supply chain actors can be complex. prisma simplifies this by providing a centralised management system where RSPO Members can easily oversee their organisational profile and manage user access across teams.
By integrating asset management into the system, such as plantation information, supply bases and manufacturing sites, organisations can efficiently track and update the details of these assets to comply with RSPO standards as well as keep track of certification progress and expiry of licenses. This centralisation is crucial in an industry where multiple actors across different geographies need to stay connected to maintain transparency and accountability.
Certification & Audit
RSPO’s standard certification system has been evolving through the years owing to changes in regulatory landscape and new sustainability requirements. As such, the need to maintain assurance has rendered RSPO’s pre-existing system to become cumbersome and complicated. prisma addresses this by offering a unified platform for managing certificates and licences, making it easier for organisations to track their status and ensure they remain compliant. This feature also extends to audit management, where organisations and auditors can streamline their operations, reducing the complexity often associated with certifications.
By allowing auditors to record observations and collect evidence during audits, even without the availability of internet, prisma enhances the accuracy and efficiency of the audit process. Standardised audit reports allow for better data analytics, helping organisations identify areas of improvement and adjust their practices in response to a dynamic sustainability landscape and maintain assurance to RSPO standards.
Trade & Traceability
At the heart of prisma is its Trade & Traceability module. It provides transparency in trade operations through announcement and registration of shipments of RSPO-certified material, making it easier to trace the journey of palm oil through various stages of production and demonstrate compliance with RSPO standards.
In addition, the platform supports credits trading, allowing Members to trade RSPO credits to meet their sustainable sourcing requirements in an integrated manner by providing features for physical stock and material balance management.
Geospatial Technology & Risk Assessment
prisma’s geospatial technology is a game-changer for organisations looking to actively manage risks in their sourcing locations. With the ability to monitor and visualise palm oil sourcing locations for potential risks such as deforestation or fire activity in near real-time. This is particularly useful for companies looking to mitigate environmental impacts and respond to sustainability challenges before they escalate.
The system provides risk assessment and mitigation tools that enable users to monitor key risk indicators, such as fire hotspots or land clearing activities. By integrating before and after satellite imagery, stakeholders can verify whether alerts—like deforestation—are legitimate or false positives. In doing so, prisma allows companies to take proactive measures, conduct investigations, and demonstrate their commitment to sustainable practices.
At the same time, prisma allows users to download their sourcing locations in formats such as geoJSON which is required for EUDR compliance. This simplifies the preparation of DDS submission whenever the user exports any material to the EU.
Together, prisma’s modules equip RSPO Members with the tools to comply with EUDR by providing them data and information required for preparation of due diligence statements. This gives businesses exporting to the EU an advantage with regards to the EUDR compliance.
Change at Scale: Two Decades of Evolution in One Platform
For RSPO, the launch of prisma was more than a technological upgrade—it consolidated nearly two decades of learnings and legacy infrastructure into a single, modern system. RSPO’s digital traceability journey began in 2006 with GreenPalm, an offsetting mechanism that allowed buyers to support sustainable producers even before physical supply chains had matured. This was followed by eTrace in 2010 and PalmTrace in 2017, systems that evolved alongside RSPO’s growing membership and the expansion of certified volumes across both physical and credit-based trading.
But as RSPO grew to certify over 20% of the world’s palm oil supply, the limitations of these legacy systems became increasingly evident. Fragmented data, manual workflows, and limited real-time visibility were no longer tenable in an era of heightened regulatory scrutiny and digital interconnectedness. prisma represented a necessary leap forward.
The transition impacted thousands of stakeholders globally, from multinational buyers and certification bodies to smallholders and processors. Aware of the scale and complexity, RSPO adopted a deliberate change management strategy. “Change management was critical, as many stakeholders had been accustomed to the traditional tools and processes that were in place,” remarked Dr. Inke van der Sluijs, RSPO’s Director for Market Transformation. “Overall, ensuring that prisma didn’t disrupt existing workflows while enhancing efficiency has been our chief focus.”
RSPO invested early in outreach, training, and stakeholder engagement to help users prepare for the transition and understand the long-term benefits of the new system. Despite inevitable teething issues—such as onboarding challenges, technical learning curves, and legacy data reconciliation—RSPO and Agridence maintained a responsive, agile rollout strategy.
This meant balancing urgency with adaptability: gathering user feedback in real time, resolving issues iteratively, and prioritising improvements that addressed users’ most pressing needs. Crucially, RSPO recognised that trust in the new system would be rebuilt not through promises, but through consistent delivery and visible improvements in data quality, usability, and assurance mechanisms.
By early March 2024, prisma had already surpassed its predecessor in user adoption, with notable increases in shipping announcements, credit transactions, and trade licence activity. Interest from other agri-commodity sectors had also emerged, as they looked to replicate RSPO’s multi-stakeholder model and learn from the prisma example. The core challenges of supply chain traceability—data fragmentation, stakeholder coordination, and compliance with evolving regulations—are shared across commodities, making RSPO’s experience a valuable reference point for broader transformation.
Preparing for the Future of Sustainable Agri-Commodity Supply Chains
As the regulatory landscape for agri-commodities continues to evolve, both RSPO and Agridence are preparing to tackle emerging challenges. With the launch of prisma, a platform designed to address urgent needs like the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), they recognise that their journey toward comprehensive sustainability solutions is just beginning.
RSPO is focused on enhancing assurance, certification and traceability, anticipating regulatory developments that extend beyond EUDR. This includes bolstering its efforts to comply with frameworks addressing conservation, as well as preparing for future sustainability requirements that could arise. By refining its oversight in these areas, RSPO aims to ensure that prisma remains a pivotal tool for certification and accountability, guiding organisations through the complexities of evolving regulations.
In alignment with RSPO’s objectives, Agridence envisions horizontal expansion into other agri-commodities, such as cocoa, coffee, and coconut, leveraging its expertise in both natural rubber and palm oil. By establishing itself as the go-to platform for various agri-commodities, Agridence can create a unified approach to sustainability across different sectors.
Agridence also aims to enhance its capabilities to include carbon tracking and accounting features as these are sticking pain points for many stakeholders who have carbon neutrality goals. By integrating end-to-end supply chain data on a single platform, Agridence envisions becoming a trusted solution for measuring and managing carbon footprints in agri-commodity supply chains. This data-centric approach can benefit financial institutions, enabling them to develop new sustainable finance instruments and asset classes, ultimately driving investment in environmentally friendly practices.
“Agridence is uniquely positioned to leverage our access to comprehensive supply chain traceability data,” said Gerald Tan, CEO at Agridence. “This strategic advantage empowers us to innovate and develop data-driven capabilities that advance sustainability. By focusing on end-to-end carbon measurement and management solutions, we are committed to driving meaningful change in agri-food supply chains and fostering a more sustainable future.”
Moreover, Agridence recognises the potential of AI in optimising business operations, improving analytics and providing actionable insights. By harnessing these advanced technologies, they can enhance data interpretation, enabling businesses to make informed decisions that align with sustainability goals.
The collaboration between RSPO and Agridence exemplifies how partnerships can drive innovation within the agri-commodity sector. By sharing insights and data, both organisations can enhance their efforts to address sustainability challenges, ensuring compliance with today’s standards while preparing for future ones.
Together, RSPO and Agridence are positioning themselves for a new era of assurance, accountability and innovation, committed to ensuring that sustainability remains a central focus of the agri-commodity industry.
[1] The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) was originally set to take effect on 30 December 2024, prompting agri-commodity players—including those in the palm oil sector—to urgently develop supply chain traceability systems to ensure compliance. In December 2024, however, the European Commission announced a one-year delay in implementation for large companies, pushing the effective date to 30 December 2025, while granting micro- and small enterprises until 30 June 2026.
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