The status of chain-of-custody certification in the countries of Central and South Europe

The significance of wood and paper products originating from certified sustainable sources has been increasing worldwide during the last two decades paralleling overall interest and concern for global sustainability issues. Forest certification is a voluntary verification tool that has been gaining importance not only as an independent verification tool in the wood processing industry but also as an influencer in private and public purchasing policies and as a component of emerging wood harvesting and trade legality schemes. There are two main types of certification, forest certification for forest management and chain-of-custody (CoC) certification which tracks certified wood through the manufacturing supply chain. This study focuses on the chain-of-custody component. A multinational survey of CoC certificate holders in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia was conducted to identify the general understanding of certification concepts as environmental, economic and social tools, to determine incentives for CoC certification implementation by companies, and to identify difficulties in existing certified wood product supply chains. Results indicate that respondents demonstrated a high level of understanding of the chain of custody certification concept. Respondents also link forest certification mainly to the issues of legality, tracing the origin source of supply and prevention from illegal logging. The main expected benefits are linked to the improvement of external company image followed by business performance factors such as penetrating new markets, increase of sales volume, expanded market share and the increase of profit margin. The key problems connected to certified supply chains relate to the overpricing of certified material inputs, while respondents reported none or minimum price premiums for their certified products over non-certified alternatives.