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Indonesia’s Sinar Mas group suffered a fresh blow on Tuesday with global retailer Carrefour responding to the latest Greenpeace report on the company’s environmental practices by pledging that it would stop buying some paper products from Sinar Mas subsidiary Asia Pulp & Paper, over allegations of “relentlessly trashing rain forests.”

Meanwhile, the Jakarta Globe obtained a letter from Kraft Foods to Sinar Mas, dated July 1, saying that the conglomerate would begin “shifting our sourcing away from APP/Sinar Mas for paper-related products until the Sinar Mas group clearly demonstrates its entities apply with local laws and are able to source pulp and paper materials sustainably.”

In a report released publicly on Tuesday, Greenpeace said it had confidential APP documents suggesting that the firm did not intend to fulfill a promise to source its wood from plantations alone after 2009.

“[The report] reveals from analysis of Indonesian government and confidential Sinar Mas maps and data, as well as on-the-ground investigations, that APP continues to acquire and destroy rain forest and peatland to feed its two pulp mills in Sumatra,” the report said.

“While the capacity of its two pulp mills in Sumatra was 2.6 million tons per year in 2006, the Sinar Mas document indicates that APP was proposing to raise that to 17.5 million tons per year, a sevenfold increase in APP’s pulp capacity in Indonesia.”

APP’s sustainability spokeswoman, Aida Greenbury, said she was not aware of any plans to increase production to that level.

“To raise it to 17 million tons would require roughly 8 million hectares of area and that’s ridiculous,” she said. “I would like to see this confidential document and make sure it is not a fabrication.”

Greenpeace said Sinar Mas, which also owns Singapore’s Golden Agri-Resources, was aiming to expand into forests that shelter endangered Sumatran tigers, as well as into deep, carbon-rich peatlands.

Greenpeace said Carrefour had pledged to stop purchasing some paper products from APP, an assertion confirmed by Hendri Satrio, spokesman for PT Carrefour Indonesia.

Hendri said Carrefour would stop buying APP products for use under the Carrefour label soon, and was still in discussions about other purchases for products not under the Carrefour label.

The Greenpeace report named a host of other companies that it said were contributing to deforestation and the loss of species in Indonesia by purchasing from Sinar Mas.

They included US retail giant Walmart, British supermarket Tesco, British retail group WH Smith, US electronics giant Hewlett-Packard, US fast-food chain KFC, Dutch office supplies company Corporate Express and Australian global paper supplier PaperlinX.

National Geographic was named as among the magazine publishers that used Sinar Mas paper, along with CNN Traveller, Cosmo Girl, Elle, Esquire and Marie Claire.

In addition to timber and paper products, Sinar Mas also allegedly uses unsustainable logging practices to make way for palm oil plantations that are seen as a major threat to Indonesian biodiversity.

Greenpeace said buyers of Sinar Mas palm oil included commodity traders Cargill of the United States and Wilmar of Singapore, as well as Japanese cosmetics producer Shiseido and US firms Campbell Soup Company, Burger King, Dunkin’ Donuts and Pizza Hut.

Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever and Switzerland’s Nestle this year dropped Sinar Mas as a supplier of palm oil in response to protests by Greenpeace. In March, Cargill asked Sinar Mas to respond to Greenpeace’s allegations.

One of the APP logging areas studied in the Greenpeace report was the Bukit Tigapuluh Forest Landscape in Riau, home to endangered Sumatran tigers and orangutans.

Another area, Kerumutan, also in Riau, was covered in peatlands that lock in carbon that causes global warming when it enters the atmosphere as a result of logging and clearing.

The destruction of rain forests and peatlands is the main reason Indonesia is considered the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

Sinar Mas’s managing director, Gandhi Sulistiyanto, told the Jakarta Globe that Greenpeace’s campaign against the group was part of a “black campaign” being conducted by the group’s competitors in the global pulp and paper and palm oil industries.

He declined to elaborate.

He urged the group’s customers to wait until the results of an independent audit of Greenpeace’s claims regarding its palm oil practices were released to pass final judgment.

In April, Sinar Mas Group appointed two bodies, Control Union Certification and the BSI Group, to assess Greenpeace’s claims.

However, Greenpeace has questioned the neutrality of the groups, which have been approved by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, a trade body of producers and buyers. The report is expected this month.

Gandhi said he received a letter from Carrefour “one or two days ago” questioning the group’s practices in Riau and Jambi, and saying the company was under heavy pressure from Greenpeace and other NGOs to stop purchasing products from Sinar Mas companies.