- FSC acknowledges APRIL has fulfilled the conditions related to the September 2025 Toba Pulp Lestari incident
- FSC maintains the suspension of APRIL’s remedy MoU while it evaluates APRIL’s updated wood-sourcing commitments
We welcome the Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC) confirmation that APRIL has met the conditions set by FSC tied to the September 2025 incident between PT Toba Pulp Lestari (PT TPL) and members of the local community.
As required, we commissioned an independent investigation into the root causes of the incident and submitted the investigation report to FSC on 27 February, followed in March by an action plan responding to the investigation team’s recommendations. On 3 June 2026, FSC determined that we had met the conditions, confirming that the measures and commitments in our plan meet the requirements of the FSC Remedy Framework.
Separately from the resolved TPL suspension, FSC has decided that APRIL’s MoU for the implementation of the FSC Remedy Framework in Indonesia will remain suspended while it evaluates the implications of recent changes to our Sustainable Forest Management Policy (SFMP 2.0). These changes followed an unexpected disruption to our fibre supply when the Government of Indonesia revoked the operating permits of 28 companies – including four of APRIL’s long-term supply partners – affecting roughly 15% of our wood supply. We acted to secure supply continuity by bringing additional open-market suppliers into our supply chain.
In doing so, we also revised our deforestation cut-off date to 31 December 2020, consistent with FSC’s Policy to Address Conversion, the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), and the Accountability Framework initiative (AFi). All open-market supply is subject to our due diligence and is verified using EUDR high-integrity traceability to compartment level.
APRIL also announced we are engaging PT Industrial Forestry Plantations (PT IFP) and PT Mayawana Persada (PT MP) as open market suppliers, both of which have in recent years been subject to external scrutiny due to past deforestation. As conditions of supply to APRIL, these companies have adopted no deforestation policies and commit to implement further measures to address past impacts. We believe supplier engagement can help with their transformation.
APRIL remains firmly committed to the implementation of the FSC remedy process in Indonesia. We acknowledge FSC’s decision while also being deeply concerned that this will further delay the delivery of environmental and social remedies to impacted local communities which have come to trust in and anticipate concrete outcomes from the remedy implementation. As we have demonstrated during the earlier suspension, we take FSC’s concerns seriously and will engage closely with the organization to address the identified concerns.
For more information, please contact Sustainability_April@aprilasia.com
