The Partnership Palm Oil concerns an agreement between the governments of the Netherlands, Indonesia and Malaysia. It is a so-called multi-stakeholder agreement that aims at improving the access of palm oil from these countries to the world market as well as sustainable production.

MVO is of the opinion that this Partnership is an important initiative which beats a bridge between private initiatives of businesses and NGO and the government policy. During the previous years, the Product Board MVO has triggered a number of projects in the field of food safety. As a result of this, the three countries have meanwhile recognised 25 ppm as a maximum value for the presence of mineral oil in palm oil which is exported. It has also been agreed to make efforts to adjust this threshold value in the future to a lower level.

Another important result of the Partnership is that the Indonesian government has decided to implement the Food Safety Guidelines, that have been established with commitment of MVO and some MVO companies, in national law. As a consequence of this, these directives get the status for a broader application. Within the framework of the Partnership, MVO also committed itself to develop methods for the analysis of mineral oil (alkanes) in palm oil. This project started already more than two years ago with a pre-test using two different analysis methods. The results of this pre-test showed that the method description had to be detailed. After adaptation of the method by analytical experts, the new method has been tested in 2008 by a limited number of laboratories. The complete ring test will be carried out in 2009.

The eventual aim of MVO is to have both methods implemented within ISO (international Organization for Standardisation).