In the gloom and doom of a freezing January day, it is easy to get depressed, especially after returning from a week of trade seminars in Malaysia. Yet, tropical paradises aside, we have much to be optimistic about in the UK timber trade because on the environmental front the tide is turning in favour of timber as the sustainable building material of choice and, importantly, we seem to be getting our house in order.

The facts speak for themselves – a brand new report by Timber Trade Federation (TTF) analyst Nick Moore tells the story of ever-rising volumes of certified timber entering the UK. We can now confidently say that in 2005 the majority (56%) of all timber imports were certified, with expectations of this figure reaching 60% in 2006. This is great news and something to be proud of – the importing trade is doing its bit.

With certification we have a promotional tool that is now the envy of all other building materials in the battle for environmental and social credit. In a world where climate change is now considered a greater threat to humanity than terrorism, sustainable timber stands apart for its positive environmental impact and, importantly, its ability to provide future generations with supplies of building material long after the mines are worked out and the oil wells run dry.

However, we cannot afford to be complacent. While some segments of the market fare better than others for certified volume (OSB and MDF are almost all certified at 98% and 87.6% respectively), hardwood sawn timber and hardwood plywood both have a lot of work to do at 10.7% and 23.8% respectively. Also, we still have concerns about illegal timber coming into the UK and, as we know from bitter experience, it only takes a few sheets of dodgy plywood in a high profile location to damage our reputation.

Supply chain

Our approach at the TTF is to tackle the problems at three points of the supply chain: the demand side (timber users), the supply side (mills and forests) and in the middle, helping our members buy and sell more legal and sustainable timber in the UK market.

On the demand side we influence markets in favour of legal and sustainable timber through our seat on the Central Point of Expertise for Timber (CPET), the government advisory board for timber procurement. Aligning the recent Olympics Sustainable Development Strategy on timber with this CPET advice has been a key recent success which will hopefully lead to more joined up thinking in our markets, making it easier to sell timber. We advise on Ecohomes and its successor scheme the Code for Sustainable Homes and participate in as many of the other government-led procurement initiatives as we can.

We talk to key timber market influencers such as banks, insurance companies, investors, building industry, architects, local authorities, and so on.

Timber procurement policies are spreading in business and government circles and we offer the UK approach as a model to others in the EU, Japan, the US and most recently China, raising our profile in the UK and helping do better business.

On the supply side we now have three practical and well-funded programmes of support to our suppliers in tropical countries. The €3.5m EC-funded Timber Trade Action Plan already provides expert advice to mills and forests in Malaysia, Indonesia, Cameroon, Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville. Ten experienced and qualified staff from the Tropical Forest Trust are now on hand in these countries to help our mills source verified timber through secure supply chains – and industry only has to foot 28% of the bill. A second phase of this programme has just been signed to provide the same level of service to our suppliers in China and Latin America with China being launched in March. In the short term 12 Chinese suppliers now have expert TFT advice and assistance through a Defra-funded action plan to set up wood origin control systems – work that participating mills will find useful in making a case for reduced tariffs if the EU extends anti-dumping duties on okoumé plywood.

Communication and participation

Good communication is key to all of our work; hence our participation in international meetings with industry, government and NGOs on Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT). In addition we have, with UK government support, commissioned market research and run trade seminars on changing markets to help our suppliers in Africa and Asia understand what is going on in our markets. In January, together with the Malaysian Timber Council and Netherlands Timber Trade Association, we successfully communicated messages to over 200 industry representatives in Malaysia following a similarly successful programme in Africa in 2005.

In the middle of the supply chain sit our members; agents, importers, manufacturers and merchants, all of whom are committed to trading in legal and preferably sustainable timber. We have developed a number of tools and advisory services, notably the Responsible Purchasing Policy (RPP), to help them better manage their supplies, and provide the necessary evidence of legality and sustainability to their customers.

The RPP has been the subject of much debate in the trade but it is fast gaining recognition as the leading trade purchasing policy and as a valuable tool to implement the TTF Code of Conduct commitments. As well as providing credible evidence of legality for customers, RPP signatories use the independent auditing by SGS as a way of promoting their green credentials to customers, winning new business. And every year the policy gets better, as we learn how to make it simpler and easier to use, and more focused on our key problem supply areas. Each annual review aligns the RPP with the latest government timber procurement advice so signatories can confidently sell into this leading and increasingly sensitive market, and so provide government buyers with the information they require.

Other activities

Around all this direct and very practical support to our members we are active in many other diverse environmental policy areas such as sustainable construction, climate change, corporate social responsibility, life cycle analysis and waste, making the case to bureaucrats, politicians, environmentalists and the media about the environmental merits of timber. On the demand side certified timber is still only 10% of supply – we have much more work to do with our customers and their specifiers and are helping Chatham House on some market research with local government, together with the North East Timber Trade Association.

And looking forward past the gloom of a miserable January there is more to be cheerful about; the new Framework Agreement with the Department for International Development gives us the means to do more with our supply chains and to maintain our leading role in the international trade in the fight against illegal logging, promoting sustainable forest management and developing the environmental credentials of timber. All this should be good news for the UK timber trade.

For further information on TTF’s environmental programme contact Andy Roby on ajroby@ttf.co.uk or Liz Betser on lbetser@ttf.co.uk.