Finnforest UK has stressed its desire to carry on doing business with Indonesian plywood mills, despite putting all new contracts with them on hold until the results of the Timber Trade Federation (TTF) backed Tropical Forest Trust (TFT ) study are published .
The company, which suspended contracts in June, issued a clarifying statement last week in response to recent Greenpeace activity on illegal logging in Indonesia.
Finnforest, which is one of the TFT funders, believes postponement of the contracts is the right message to send to Indonesia to “highlight the seriousness of the situation while offering the Indonesian forestry sector a viable econ-omic reason to progress towards sustainable forestry and eventually certification”.
Meanwhile the Indonesian embassy in London also issued a statement describing its deep regret for Greenpeace’s recent activities at Tilbury where pallets of Indonesian plywood were marked as illegally logged timber. The embassy described the Greenpeace action as “counterproductive for the continuous endeavours to combat illegal logging in the country”.
Finnforest UK’s environmental officer Rachel Butler said that Finnforest looked forward to the results of the independent TFT study.
