RSPO Supply Chain Certification: what we know before endorsement

The chain of custody standard your palm oil sits under is being rewritten, and endorsement is expected in September 2026. That is next month.

If that is the first you have heard of it, you are not behind. The consultation ran between March and May, the draft was only ever visible to people who registered on the commenting platform, and nothing has been published since it closed. There is no clause-level comparison available to anyone outside the process.

So this is a tracker rather than a briefing. Here is what is known, what is inference, and why the honest answer for now is to do nothing.

Why it is being revised at all

Nothing has gone wrong. RSPO standards are reviewed at least every five years under the ISEAL Code of Good Practice for Sustainability Systems, clause 6.14. The current Supply Chain Certification Standard was endorsed in February 2020, so it was simply due.

The review was announced on 10 February 2025 with an expected duration of eighteen months. A Task Force of up to twenty members was formed with representation across the seven ordinary membership sectors, supported by three technical committees. It reports to the Standard Standing Committee, which escalates to the Board of Governors if consensus fails.

The stated objective is worth reading carefully, because it tells you what kind of revision this is: to assess the existing requirements, decide whether revisions are needed to improve clarity and relevance, and keep the standard auditable, implementable and applicable across sectors for at least the next five years.

That is a maintenance and usability review, not a tightening. Which does not mean nothing changes, but it does mean the framing is different from, say, the deforestation regulation arriving on top of it.

What RSPO says is changing

Four things, in RSPO's own summary of Draft 1.0.

The standard has been restructured around business type. A new section groups requirements into twelve categories, including mills, refineries and product manufacturers. Alongside the draft sits a Supply Chain Certification Checklist by Business Type, listing which requirements apply to which category.

This is the change that matters most for how you use the document. At the moment the standard is one text that everybody reads, working out for themselves which parts apply. The revision points you at your category. If you are a UK food manufacturer buying refined palm oil or fractions, you are a product manufacturer, and you would read the general chain of custody section plus your category, rather than the whole thing.

New annexes cover multisite and group certification. If you run several sites under one certificate, this is your section, and it is currently the thinnest part of the 2020 standard.

Two business types get their own requirements for the first time: oleochemicals plants and food service companies. Food service is the notable one. Catering and contract food businesses have been awkwardly served by a standard written around processing and trading, and this is RSPO acknowledging that.

The language has been rewritten to consistent drafting and syntax rules. Easy to dismiss as cosmetic. It is not, if you have ever argued with an auditor about what a clause meant. Consistent drafting is how ambiguity gets removed, and removing ambiguity changes outcomes even when the requirement is unchanged.

What is not known

The transition period. Nothing has been published. The 2020 standard took effect immediately on endorsement with a twelve month transition, so audits ran against it from 1 February 2021. That is the obvious precedent, but it is precedent, not commitment.

Whether September 2026 holds. Two things suggest caution. The consultation is labelled Public Consultation 1, which implies a second was contemplated. And as of the middle of August, the Task Force's sixth meeting was still listed as date to be confirmed, with endorsement supposedly a few weeks away.

There is also a recent precedent for an RSPO standard slipping, though it belongs to a different standard rather than this one. At the 22nd General Assembly in November 2025, members approved a resolution postponing mandatory implementation of the Principles and Criteria 2024 Standard to 31 May 2026, making it fully effective from 1 June 2026, to give members and certification bodies time to align processes and complete training.

That was the P&C, with its own task force and its own timeline, so it says nothing about how the chain of custody review is progressing. What it does show is the organisation's disposition: presented with an ecosystem that was not ready, RSPO members voted to move the date rather than hold it. Worth holding lightly, as a read on institutional behaviour rather than as evidence about this standard.

Anything at clause level. The change log comparing Draft 1.0 against the 2020 standard exists, covering the general chain of custody section and annexes 1 to 4, but it is published inside the consultation platform rather than on the RSPO site. Draft 1.0 itself required registration to view. Neither is reachable now the consultation has closed.

That is the honest limit of what anyone outside the Task Force can say. Any article you read this month claiming to tell you which clauses changed is either working from the webinar recordings or making it up.

Why there is nothing to do yet

Three reasons.

The revision is a restructure and a clarity exercise, not a new set of obligations. Requirements moving into a business-type section is not the same as requirements getting harder.

No transition has been announced, so there is no deadline to plan against. If the 2020 precedent holds you would have roughly a year from endorsement, which is a comfortable amount of time to do a gap assessment against a document that actually exists.

And the text is not final. Comments from the consultation feed back into the draft. Anything you build against Draft 1.0 could be built against wording that does not survive.

The exception is if you are in one of the two business types getting requirements for the first time. If you run an oleochemicals plant or a food service business holding RSPO certification, you are moving from being covered by a general standard to having a section written for you, and that is a real change in what you will be audited against. Worth watching closely rather than waiting.

The Monday morning list

1. Work out which of the twelve business types you will fall into. Product manufacturer for most food sites, but check, because it determines which requirements you read.
2. If you are oleochemicals or food service, treat this as yours rather than background. You are gaining a section that did not previously exist.
3. If you hold a multisite or group certificate, the new annexes are the part to read first when the final text lands.
4. Do not start a gap assessment. There is no published text to assess against and no deadline to work back from.
5. Watch for the endorsement announcement rather than the standard itself. The endorsement is what carries the transition period, and the transition period is the only date that will matter to you.
6. If September passes quietly, that is information too. A standard whose sixth task force meeting was unscheduled a month before endorsement is a standard that may take longer.