SCA Timber‘s exports of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified timber to the UK have soared since adopting the FSC’s new volume credit system.
The Swedish company, which piloted the scheme before its official launch last October, said FSC shipments have grown to around 70% of all its timber exports to Britain, compared to an average of just 15% under the FSC’s old threshold scheme.
Bob Bastow, business development manager at SCA Timber Supply, said the scheme has made a “vast difference”, with an increased and more consistent level of FSC-certified material on the UK market as a result.
SCA customers who have achieved FSC chain of custody to the new scheme include Severn Timber, Hoppings, STP Joinery, Snows Timber, Magnet Windows and JB Timber.
The new scheme allows timber processors to label as FSC certified the same volume of FSC timber they process.
The older threshold scheme, which requires processors to segregate certified and uncertified material, demands at least 70% of material to be FSC certified before processors can label product.
Mr Bastow said the threshold scheme, being phased out in the next two years, had meant much FSC material could not be labelled as “certified”.
He said: “The new system is allowing companies to look at FSC chain of custody who could not work it before because there was always a big cost attached to segregation.”
Nick Cliffe, marketing communications manager at the FSC UK Working Group, said: “We are really encouraged to see that it’s started to be taken up. It will lead to increased availability of labelled product.”
