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Having persuaded Nestle, the world’s largest food maker, to stop buying palm oil from the Sinar Mas Group, Greenpeace on Thursday urged Nestle’s third-party suppliers to stop doing business with the Indonesian plantation company.

Bustar Maitar, leader of the environmental group’s Southeast Asia forest team, claimed that Sinar Mas had destroyed tropical rainforests and peatlands to set up its palm oil plantations. He said that despite Nestle’s commitment to saving the rainforests, the food giant was still using palm oil produced by Sinar Mas and sold to third-party suppliers.

According to a Greenpeace report released on Wednesday, Nestle purchases palm oil products from companies supplied by Sinar Mas, including US commodities giant Cargill and Netherlands-based Loders Croklaan, a subsidiary of the IOI Group.

“ The third-party [suppliers] contribute 70 percent of palm oil [used by Nestle],” Bustar said. “Despite their announcement canceling their direct orders with Sinar Mas, Nestle will still be using palm oil from Sinar Mas in Kit Kats. Our campaign will continue until Nestle has cut the Sinar Mas Group from its supply chain completely.”

In a statement released on Wednesday, Nestle said it has dropped Sinar Mas Group as a supplier of palm oil and replaced it with an unidentified supplier.

Gandi Sulistiyanto, managing director of Sinar Mas Group, said he understood that Nestle was under pressure, but that “if buyers don’t want to buy from sellers, we can’t do anything.”

He added that Sinar Mas would continue to ask Nestle executives to discuss the issues raised by Greenpeace.

The Greenpeace report claimed that Nestle uses 320,000 tons of palm oil annually, up from 170,000 tons in 2007.

Bustar said Nestle was one of the 40 companies that formed a coalition that vowed in early 2008 to terminate their contracts with palm oil producers that destroy rainforests. “Nestle is one of the biggest companies [in the coalition],” he said. “Therefore we want to see them prove their words.”

So far, Bustar said, only four of the 40 companies have committed to their agreement. The other companies are Unilever, which canceled its contract with Sinar Mas three months ago, Kraft and Royal Dutch Shell.

Brata Hardjosubroto, head of public relations at PT Nestle Indonesia, said, “We have studied the Greenpeace report and we share the deep concern about the serious environmental threat to rainforests and peatlands in Southeast Asia caused by the planting of palm oil plantations. Nestle recently announced its commitment to using only certified sustainable palm oil by 2015, when sufficient quantities should be available.”

“We will continue to pressure our suppliers to eliminate any sources of palm oil which are related to rainforest destruction and to provide valid guarantees of traceability as quickly as possible,” he added.

The Indonesian Palm Oil Association (Gapki) said it regretted that Greenpeace’s actions had led two major international companies to stop purchasing palm oil from Indonesia.

“These repeating cases must be stopped immediately since it has already happened twice,” Joko Supriyono, Gapki’s secretary general, told the Jakarta Globe. “It isn’t impossible that the same case will happen and happen again if we, as a producer country, do not do something about it.”

Therefore, he said Gapki will ask the government, including the trade and agriculture ministries, to respond. “We have to see this as a serious matter and with government’s involvement hopefully palm oil producers will have a stronger bargaining position with end-buyers,” he said.

T rade and agriculture officials were not available for immediate comments.