Do Direct Load Inserts Generate Redo?

As to so many Oracle related questions the answer is: IT DEPENDS...

If you are in the middle of such a tricky situation where, in the development environment your bulk direct load process performs well but into production the same direct load process behaves poorly because it generates a lot of redo, then you should start by checking the following:

1. is your development database running in NOARCHIVELOG mode? In NOARCHIVELOG mode the direct load operations produce redo information at minimum which is not necessary the same into a database which runs in ARCHIVELOG mode. It's not unlikely to have the development environment in NOARCHIVELOG and the production in ARCHIVELOG mode therefore this is the first thing to check.
2. is the destination table from the production site configured with NOLOGGING attribute? Without this setting the direct load inserts against the table will continue to generate redo information as normal. So, check the LOGGING column from (USER/ALL/DBA)_TABLES view for the corresponding destination table.
3. has the production database the FORCE LOGGING option enabled? This may be required if there are some standby databases in place therefore all direct load operations will produce redo information no matter what. To check this you can query the FORCE_LOGGING column from the V$DATABASE view.