Dreaming of a green Christmas: Iceland debuts palm oil-free festive range

It may still be over two months away, but for the UK's retailers planning for Christmas has been underway for months. As such, supermarket Iceland has this week announced it is to offer customers the chance for some guilt-free Christmas dining, confirming that its festive range of products will contain no palm oil.

Building on its high profile pledge earlier this year to remove palm oil from all its own label brands by the end of April 2019, the company said its Christmas range of luxury mince pies, vegetarian centrepieces and desserts has been developed to entirely avoid the controversial ingredient.

Iceland said over 100 products in its Christmas 2018 range will not include palm oil, adding that it was on track to meet its April 2018 date for removing palm oil from its products altogether.

The milestone is the result of a £5m investment to reconfigure products to avoid palm oil without compromising taste, the firm said.

"This year we have worked hard to develop recipes that don't include palm oil for the Christmas range, collaborating across our product development team and with trusted suppliers to ensure that our food is of the highest quality and delivers the best possible taste," said Neil Nugent, Head Chef at Iceland, in a statement. "We're proud to be leading the way and developing our seasonal offering in line with our commitment to give customers the option of Christmas foods without palm oil as an ingredient."

Palm oil remains highly controversial, with green groups accusing suppliers of the widely used commodity of fueling deforestation in South East Asia, leading to increased greenhouse gas emissions and habitat loss.

A raft of high profile consumer goods companies have responded by pledging to source sustainable certified palm oil, which is produced in line with best practices designed to guard against deforestation.

However, Iceland and others have argued that the best way to avoid the environmental impacts associated with palm oil is to avoid the product altogether.

Advocates for the industry have countered that palm oil tends to enjoy higher yields than other forms of vegetable oil and as such switching to alternatives can come with its own land use impacts.

But Richard Walker, Iceland's Managing Director, said the company remained committed to removing palm oil from its products until stronger guarantees could be provided that the ingredient was not contributing to deforestation.

"We always try to give consumers a real choice about what they buy and this was a key driver of our decision, announced in April, to allow Iceland customers to join us in saying ‘no to palm oil'," he said. "This is a stance we will maintain until Iceland can guarantee that palm oil is not causing rainforest destruction. I am really proud of the work our food development team has carried out to create our new Christmas range without palm oil - an ideal way to celebrate as we reach the realisation of our commitment by the end of this year."