Chemicals company BASF has announced it is to offer the cosmetics industry palm oil options that are exclusively certified as sustainable.

Announced at the 3rd Palm Dialog event during in-cosmetics, the decision to offer only certified sustainable palm oil specialities comes as part of BASF’s initiative Time For Change, with the company having made a commitment to switch around 330 palm-based products to ‘Mass Balance’ standard in the course of 2018 globally.

Xavier Susterac, Senior Vice President BASF Personal Care Europe, said, “This is an important milestone for the cosmetics industry’s progress towards sustainable palm – and some of our customers have already made the step.”

According to the company, ‘Mass Balance’ (MB) is one of the RSPO supply chain models that foster the physical flow of certified raw materials within the oleo-derivatives supply chain.’

The company has already established its commitment to palm oil traceability, pledging to source only RSPO-certified sustainable palm kernel oil by 2020.

While the company was able to trace 80 percent of its overall palm oil exposure in 2017, the certified sustainable oil is 100 percent traceable.