The grant, from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and supported by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, will enable the groups to launch a two-year project in China this month.
The groups, including Chinese NGO Global Environment Institute, will help Chinese companies develop their wood control systems in a bid to screen out potentially illegal wood which is currently used in products.
TFT recently began work in China to link factories which supply TFT and TTF members to legal, well-managed forest operations.
“This Defra grant will help us to establish the China office fully and raise awareness among a much larger number of Chinese factories of the practical actions they can take to source good wood, and of the benefits that will flow to them as a result,” said TFT executive director Scott Poynton.
TTF chief executive John White said the TTF had also lodged a second Timber Trade Action Plan application with the EU to cover South America, following the first plan covering Indonesia, Malaysia and parts of Africa.
He said the UK trade would soon have most of the world’s tropical timber sources covered by some form of scheme to provide support for suppliers to reduce the risk of illegal logs entering the supply chain.
