Chain of custody – the vital link
An article by Alasdair McGregor, BM TRADA Certification, published in TRADA Timber Industry Yearbook 2001.
Forest certification has been a pre-eminent subject within the UK forestry industry throughout most of the nineties. Most people are aware of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the UK Woodland Assurance Scheme (UKWAS) and will have heard about PEFC (Pan-European Forest Certification Initiative), even if they don’t know exactly what it is.
Yet the next stage, the one that happens after the logs leave the forest, has so far, received much less attention. And yet, without chain of custody certification (to give it its proper name) there would be no purpose to FSC, UKWAS, PEFC et al. This is because chain of custody is the stage that delivers the MESSAGE. The message that the pine shelf that you are about to buy in your local DIY superstore has been made with timber from a forest that has been well (sustainably) managed. That is a relatively simple message, one which most of the millions of people who choose to buy timber products can understand and which makes them feel good about buying that product.
In order to sell a product as certified, irrespective of which certification scheme you are working with, you must be able to prove that the timber used to make that product came from a forest certified under that scheme. If you cannot prove it you are committing fraud. If you can prove the source you can apply a label to that product which informs your customer that the product is derived from a certified source.
Who is affected by chain of custody certification? If you are a furniture manufacturer making, say, kitchen units the chances are you will use chipboard and MDF sourced from British panelboard mills. You may also use some British grown ash, beech or oak for the mouldings and trim as well as some imported hardwood. If you want to sell your kitchen units as certified you will need chain of custody certification and so will most or all of your suppliers.
Indeed, chain of custody affects everyone in the supply chain from the forest owner selling the logs or the standing timber, the harvesting and marketing company which harvests and distributes the logs, the sawmills that buy the logs and process them into sawn timber and sawmill co-products, the panelboard mills that buy the logs and the sawmill co-products and produce chipboard, MDF and OSB and so on down the line, to the myriad of companies who buy those products and use them to make furniture, joinery items, musical instruments, fencing, charcoal, timber frame houses and those interesting little carvings made from yew that you see at craft fairs on a Sunday afternoon. (You don’t know what they are meant to be but you like them anyway because they are made of wood). If all of those enterprises wish to sell their products as certified they will need chain of custody certification.
Forest management certification has developed rapidly in the UK over the last year. The certification of Forest Enterprise (FE) as well as the two main forest management companies dramatically increased the availability of certified British logs and thrust Britain to fourth place in the FSC league behind Sweden, Poland and the US. The certification of FE in particular was the catalyst that sparked most of the UK forest products industry to go for chain of custody certification. Now most of the leading sawmills including BSW, James Jones, Howie Forest Products, John Gordon & Sons, James Callander & Sons and Adam Wilson & Sons have successfully achieved certification. All of the panelboard mills have achieved it, CSC at all three of their sites, Egger at both Hexham and Barony, and, most recently, Sonae at their new £90 million mill in Knowsley, as well as their Spanboard operation in Coleraine, Northern Ireland. Louisiana Pacific in Waterford was the latest panel board manufacturer to achieve chain of custody certification. The paper mills are waiting in the wings for market demand for their products to grow, but they too will pursue chain of custody certification in due course.
In order to achieve chain of custody certification all these companies must prove the source of their raw materials. They do that by firstly preparing a documented procedure that describes how their chain of custody process works. The procedure covers the process from “cradle to grave”. How are purchase contracts set up? How is raw material ordered? What happens to it when it is delivered into stock? How is it identified from non-certified stock? How is it processed, labelled, sold and distributed? How are personnel involved in the process trained so that they know what to do? The documented procedure is the key to the process. The company then has to demonstrate that what they do in theory they also do in practice and that it is workable and can deliver true product traceability. All of this is assessed by an independent certification body (such as BM TRADA Certification Ltd) and, if found to be workable, will result in the issuing of an FSC certificate, valid for five years. This is not a cause for relief and celebration however, since the certification body will come back at least once a year to check that the company continues to operate to the procedures that it was certified against.
TRADA-Trak is BM TRADA Certification’s chain of custody certification scheme, accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council. BM TRADA Certification is a UKAS accredited certification body with clients, companies and trading partners throughout the world.
Who wants certified timber products? Without doubt the process has been driven thus far by the retail ‘DIY sheds’ that have identified the opportunity to sell certifed timber products as a major marketing tool. While the high profile demand from the sheds has, to an extent, created a somewhat distorted impression of the scale of demand for certified products, there is no doubt that demand is growing significantly. Local authorities, public utilities, government departments and major national building companies are increasingly specifying certified products. As awareness of the importance and relevance of environmental issues grows, specifiers increasingly will seek the assurance that the timber products they use are derived from well-managed forests.
TRADA Technology, through its environmental consultancy, can assist timber users and specifiers to develop their own strategies for selection and sourcing timber and timber products from well-managed forests.
Chain of custody certification is an enabling process. It enables us to promote the fact that we do manage our forests responsibly and that we are capable of producing products that people can feel justifiably good about buying. It is probably the most powerful marketing mechanism that the timber trade has had in a generation because it allows us to promote perhaps the one key advantage that timber has over plastic, concrete and steel: that timber is endlessly renewable, infinitely variable, uniquely versatile, and, without question, the most environmentally friendly material available today and for endless future generations to come.
