All Blog Posts (16)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a clear trend in the forest products industry. It is promoting companies to move from purely focusing on productivity and scale to focusing more on responsible and sustainable business activities. This trend, in part, has been fuelled by rising environmental standards and timber trade regulations which are pushing companies to achieve compliance. CSR is also being pursued proactively by many companies as a source…

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Business and government both have a role to play in promoting “green” and legal trade. Sometimes companies lead the way in the interest of maintaining a sustainable business, or to stand out from the competition. Sometimes it is policy that sparks change across a supply chain. The Lacey Act Amendments in the United States, the European Union’s Timber Regulation, Indonesia’s new timber legality assurance system are all examples of the recent…

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Increasing evidence has become available that domestic Chinese market may present good opportunities for “green” forest products. According to our recent survey, at least one-third of Chinese wood products manufacturers possess at least one type of third-party environmental certificate, led by ISO14000, China Environmental Labeling and FSC. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of China has released its own “Evaluation Standard for Green Building”, and the State Forestry…

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A “traditional” supply chain in the forest products industry consists of a group of organizations and people (as well as information and technologies) that are involved in value-adding activities to transform forests, logs and lumber into finished products such as furniture and floors that are delivered to the end customer.  

 

As countries increasingly collaborate to combat illegal logging and to promote sustainable forestry worldwide, many forest products companies’…

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CHINA has proven comparatively resilient against the global economic downturn. As the Chinese forest products industry continues to grow, many challenges, but also opportunities, still lie ahead. To maintain high growth rates in the face of weak export demand and rising production costs, the industry is looking to stoke domestic consumption. It is also starting to embrace environmentally sustainable business strategies as a way to stay competitive in a global marketplace…

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Since 2008, the State Forestry Administration of China, US Agency for International Development, EU FLEGT Asia Program, and international environmental groups led by the Nature Conservancy (TNC), the Rainforest Alliance (RA), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have jointly delivered three major annual conferences under the theme “Forests, Markets, Policy and Practice” to address industry’s growing need for market information and expertise relating to sustainable forestry, forest certification… Continue

What promised to be a confrontational debate about forest certification between two global leaders of different schemes failed to materialise during an otherwise lively session at the Forest Industry Development Conference presented by ForestWorks in Melbourne, Australia, at the beginning of September.

Note that this is the republication of an article that originally appeared in Timber & Forestry e-news, Source: Issue No. 142 (Republished with…

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Since late 1990s, the Chinese forest products industry has seen a heightened awareness of the environment. This process is characterized by 3 stages of development: Continue

Scott Poynton – TFT Executive Director. He has worked in international forestry issues for more than 25 years, predominantly with the private sector and for a short period as Managing Director of the world’s largest wooden outdoor furniture manufacturing company.…

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Expert Interview with Jack Hurd

Jack Hurd is the Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Regional Forest Program in Asia-Pacific. In this capacity he leads TNC’s regional forest-carbon /REDD+ efforts as well as the USAID-funded Responsible Asia Forestry and Trade (RAFT) Program, a 5-year effort designed to influence the public policies and corporate practices that drive the global trade in forest products. Previously he was the Director of TNC’s Forest Trade…

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Carbon stocks are stable or increasing in sustainably managed and certified production forests, a recent FAO report suggests.

"The effectiveness of sustainable forest management practices in maintaining carbon stocks in production forests is clear from experiences in North America and the EU. These regions contain most of the world's certified forests and have generally stable or increasing…

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In contrast with sluggish timber markets and exports due to the global economic crisis, the demand for forest certification and certified wood has been ever-growing in China among many countries worldwide. Three forest certification schemes are currently active in China: FSC (Forest Stewardship Council), PEFC (Programme for Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes), and most noticeably, China’s national forest certification scheme (CFCC) which is soon to be officially launched by the Chinese… Continue

The global economic crisis has caused profound impacts within the Chinese wood products industry and temporarily frozen its exports, as well as the appetite for raw materials imports. According to trade statistics, China’s imports of wood products, primarily logs, fell by 9.6% in 2009 to US$7.3 billion from US$8 billion in 2008, this compares to average annual growth of 13% between 2005 and 2008. China’s wood products…

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Driven by technology improvement, the Chinese forest products companies are steadily moving up the value chain from OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to become OBMs (own-brand manufacturers), and pushed up industry’s productivity and profitability. Average productivity of timber-processing companies more than doubled from…

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As the world’s leading producer and exporter of wood furniture, plywood, fiberboard, floors and many other wood interior and building products, the Chinese wood industry consists of thousands of companies that range vastly in size from small workshops that employ a couple of part-time labors to world-class giants such as Power Deckor Group, Dare Group, Lacquer Craft, and Markor Furniture, which own several multi-national brands and distribution channels in domestic and overseas markets.… Continue

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