In recent years APP has lost packaging contracts with big brands such as foodmaker Kraft and Barbie's Mattel after Greenpeace accused APP of clearing forest that is home to endangered Sumatran tigers and orangutans.Deforestation accounts for 70% of Indonesia's carbon emissions so the impacts of forest clearance are massive.

"APP has committed to stop logging in all natural forest," the firm's sustainability head Aida Greenbury told AFP. "We will only expand operations on open land and scrubland."

In a statement the company said that from "February 1st, all of APP's suppliers have suspended natural forest clearance", and that it was conducting assessments to identify high-conservation-value forest for protection.

The Indonesian firm has failed to carry out similar commitments before, including an agreement with environmental group WWF signed in 2003 to protect high-conservation-value forests over an initial 12-year period. WWF cancelled the agreement in 2004, saying the company had failed to make any progress on its commitment.

"Unfortunately, APP has a long history of making commitments to WWF, customers and other stakeholders that it has failed to live up to," said the WWF's conservation director in Indonesia, Nazir Foed.

"We hope this time the company does what it promised," Foed said, adding that it would independently monitor APP's activities.

Greenpeace's forest campaign chief in Indonesia, Bustar Maitar, said that if APP fully implements its new policies "it will mark a dramatic change in direction, after years of deforestation in Indonesia".