�Following Global Supply Chains��

Andy Lehren

GIJC 2025 Kuala Lumpur

Editorial Director, Center for Collaborative Journalism

Investigations editor, Mongabay

Board member, Investigative Reporters & Editors

Environmental investigations

Common elements:

• Satellite imagery
• Databases
• Following supply chains
• Documents, business records, reports
• Science
• Traditional reporting: Extensive interviewing

How we went

from a college assignment

to an international collaboration

Oysters Summer Assignment

How does the system work?

… And how does it really work?

We began to unpack the oyster industry

• Most oysters eaten in the U.S. are imported, not grown in the country
• The value is almost $1 billion in four years
• Leading importers:

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Week 2-3-4

How is the system regulated?

• There is no one regulatory agency
• Some recalls are by the federal government
• Some recalls are by state government
• Local agencies may issue alerts
• Some states issue warnings
• Businesses may voluntarily suspend operations

Later in the semester …

The system is complicated

We built databases to track state and federal recalls

State closures

Federal Import Refusals

https://datadashboard.fda.gov/oii/cd/imprefusals.htm

https://datadashboard.fda.gov/oii/cd/imprefusals.htm

How to find victims

• Some may die from bad seafood.
• Others may be hospitalized or get very sick, including with lifelong injuries.
• How to find them?
• Lawsuits, clips, OSINT

We realized we found

a strong Canadian side to the story

Reached out …

• Collaborations are built from respected journalism organizations and people you meet … like at conferences such as this.
• Rob Cribb. A respected Canadian investigative journalist. ICIJ. IRE member.
• Runs the Investigative Journalism Bureau.
• Publishes in the National Post and its chain of newspapers, including Vancouver Sun and Montreal Gazette.

The Canadian records

We did the same thing as in the United States … We checked recalls. Outbreaks. And more.

Notice: Lobbying data and records. And possible solutions.

The Collaboration

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Pulitzer Center

Environmental Collaborations

Deforesting a Philippine Rainforest for Teslas, Toyotas and other electric vehicles

The story …

• About how one of the world’s largest nickel mines is set to expand into once protected rainforest.
• The price we pay for green cars.
• How the expansion would damage additional watersheds, increasing mud slides, scarring land.
• How the mine expansion divides the community.
• How water quality tests reveal toxins.

I’m going to talk about…

• How nickel flows from Palawan to Teslas and Toyotas
• Following the supply chain from the Philippines to Japan to the United States
• Some of the lessons we learned to document this
• Storytelling for digital and television
• Our similar viscose rayon story

Tracking the supply chain

• Corporate filings with regulators
• Corporate presentations to investors
• Trade press
• Shipping records

It’s kinda complicated

• It’s not direct -- not A to B
• It’s more often A to B to C to D
• In the case of nickel the trail is:
• Rio Tuba, a subsidiary of Nickel Asia
• Coral Bay, owned mostly by Sumitomo Metal
• To Sumitomo Metal Mining in Japan
• To Panasonic
• To Tesla, Toyota, more

Documents, Data, Sources

• US import data
• UN Comtrade data
• Industry analysts like S&P Global
• Government reports

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… but these only give the general picture

Comtrade

US Geological Survey reports

Presentation by mine owner �to investors

• General information, patterns
• More specifics than you might think
• Boasting about reserves and expansion plans

Nickel Asia corporate filings

Details on the mine

Nickel Asia corporate filings

Details on the processing facility only partly owned by Nickel Asia

Sumitomo corporate filings

Details on the processing facility only partly owned by Nickel Asia

Industry analysts

Trade publications

Even seemingly boring press releases

Tesla securities filings

Toyota, Panasonic announcements

Commercial and other services

• Sayari
• Bloomberg terminal
• Lawsuits
• OCCRP Aleph
• Trase
• … and more

Lessons

• In the business press, information gets often chopped in segments
• The hard part is connecting the dots

Commerical shipping data

Commercial providers

About shipping data

• Details may be there – or not
• Shipments may be there – or not
• Depth of data varies country by country
• It’s good for finding that shipments happen, but there may well be more than you find
• Search a variety of ways, including subsidiaries, spelling variations, by commodity

Dead Ends

• Yes we had them
• We looked at other mines
• We looked at other possible supply chain routes
• We had conversations with experts and others that did not go anywhere

Team Work

• This only happened because of a great team.
• First the relentless work by Karol.
• Collaboration from almost the outset.
• Terrific support from the Pulitzer Center.
• Team work within NBC.

Deforesting Indonesian Rainforests For Fashion

No Karol

• Hurdles, harrowing journey to send videographer to Kalimantan.
• A lot of team work.
• Focus on story telling.

Royal Golden Eagle

• RGE, a Singapore-based conglomerate, vertically integrated
• Plantation trees from timber concessions on Kalimantan, elsewhere.
• Asia Pacific Resources International Holding (APRIL) processes trees to pulp
• Sateri factories in China turn slurry to viscose rayon, the third most common fiber in the world
• Promising to go it alone after FSC inquiry and bank lending woes

Tracking deforestation by suppliers

• Indonesian government records on Kalimantan suppliers for boundaries, production
• Satellite imagery to track deforestation against RGE promises
• Forest Stewardship Council for investigations
• Various NGO reports

FSC Documents

Some lessons

• Precision with satellite imagery can be hard won.
• Estimates with “at least” figures more likely.
• Additional documentation, reporting on the ground, NGOs valuable.
• NGOs often take just one piece, so the real work is seeing the bigger picture.
• NGOs can be really well meaning but have pressures or not as exact.

Following the supply chain

• It’s not from A to B …
• It’s kinda complicated:
• Kalimantan concessions that continue deforesting island supply April.
• April processes plantation wood.
• Three Sateri factories turn this into viscose rayon.
• The biggest maker – but who buys it?

Who buys Sateri viscose rayon?

• Company supply chain reports happening more due to watchdog pressure
• NGO surveys of the fashion industry
• Shipping records

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… beware of dated information

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Collaboration

• Realized late that that a major Barcelona-based fashion company, Desigual, has been getting Sateri viscose
• Contacted a certain Gloria Pallares as soon as we realized this
• Shared all our work and she turned this around, combining with Manuela’s work on leather in Brazil

The Collaboration

• Anton L. Delgado
• Rich Schapiro
• Anna Schecter
• Andy Lehren
• Yasmine Salam
• Narin Sun
• Stephanie Gosk
• Jody Henenfeld

The story begins with Anton

• Conservationists told him about poaching of long-tailed macaques in Cambodia
• They can be farm raised legitimately, but it is expensive and demand is hit
• Seven major macaque farms
• Cambodia a leading supplier to the world

Where do the macaques go?

• Following the supply chain
• But data tools used for following shipping imports – like Panjiva, ImportGenius and UN Comtrade -- won’t help
• Why? Ever hear of flying monkeys?

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Other data sources

• CITES data
• Centers for Disease Control data
• Sources who helped us identify planes
• Following planes with fight tracker apps

But are they illegal?

• Sources – especially conservations – said yes
• But documentation is hard to get

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SEC filings

Court records

Sources helped

• Conservationist. They knew a lot.
• Investigators. But not always.

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The narrative

“It’s a dirty business”

Tip of iceberg. Insane demand.

Booming business. �Covid only added to it

Cambodia doubles exports�33,000+ monkeys to U.S. alone

Financial incentive to poach

Now endangered

Now

• Long-tailed macaques are now endangered
• More arrests
• Diplomatic tangles

Dead Ends

We had a lot

• Anton visiting Cambodian farms
• Forestry officials?
• Other companies?

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Are they needed for research?

• Animal rights activists say no
• Medical experts say yes (mostly)
• Primates key for testing drug and vaccine testing
• Deborah Fuller, the associate director of research at the Washington National Primate Research Center, said the role monkeys played in the development of Covid vaccines underscores how vital they are to drug research: "I would say that our ability to have developed vaccines within a year, if it weren’t for nonhuman primates, we would still be sitting around waiting for a vaccine right now," she said.

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Story, video link

• https://www.nbcnews.com/news/race-covid-vaccine-enriched-monkey-poachers-endangered-macaques-rcna51970

Trying To Choose The Story

• Plenty of options
• Can we find rainforests about to be destroyed or not yet gutted?
• Can we find promises of protection?
• Can we show how economic forces – especially choices by American and Western consumers – are factors?

About collaborations

• It’s not about republishing another person’s story.
• It’s about sharing information, meeting regularly and teaming up to do more than you could alone.
• It can then lead to wider publishing efforts, multiple languages and platforms.

Best Practices

• Trust
• Talking regularly
• Figure out the skills and talents that each reporter brings
• Be sensitive to a collaborator’s internal newsroom pressures, deadlines.
• Bring out the best in one another for the strongest story possible.
• Learn from one another so we are all better the next time.

The International Center for Investigative Journalists

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Disarming Disinformation

A collaboration this year among five news organizations around the world.

• Tempo in Indonesia
• CCIJ in Africa
• ARIJ in the MENA region
• Mongabay, El Pais
• Sumaúma in Brazil

What Else?

• You could apply some of these methods for tracking good made from child labor
• Or from sanctioned regions like Xinjiang
• Or that involve labor trafficking