Nearly half of all sampled birch products—used in furniture, kitchen panels, and musical instruments—certified by FSC or PEFC have been misidentified and do not come from the correct country of origin, raising fears that huge shipments of Russian and Belarusian wood are still being smuggled into the global markets, including the UK.
That is according to a new study published by World Forest ID, which used chemical fingerprinting to reveal that 46% of sampled bird products did not come from Poland, Latvia, Ukraine, or Estonia as labelled.
And whilst the tests did not specify the country where the wood was grown, experts say Russia and Belarus are the only plausible origins: “Where else could it be from?” said David Hopkins, CEO of Timber Development UK, who spoke to the Guardian earlier today.
“There’s a small number of companies that produce this stuff legally,” he said. “The birch trees in Finland are being taken up by a small number of sawmills producing birch plywood.
“There’s pockets of it elsewhere in the Baltics and Scandinavia. But the bulk of it will be from Russia, putting money through the Russian economy and breaching sanctions while you are doing it.”
New Report: Unlocking transparency and exposing material risk
The World Forest ID analysis—partly funded by FSC—found that of the 52 samples with an FSC or PEFC certification, 24 had an incorrect harvest claim. While tests were conducted on a few samples, the report author, Dr Peter Gasson from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, said the findings indicated that oversight was insufficient to guarantee claims.
“While certification is a critical step towards a global market that recognises legal and sustainable forestry practices, and these samples were identified on the basis of a high level of misdeclaration risk, it is clear that genuine system integrity can only be established through supplementary verification in the chain of custody,” the report said.
Some 88% of the samples submitted by companies were certified, with 14% covered by PEFC and 85% by FSC: “While certification schemes are often used to mitigate the risk of sourcing illegally harvested or sanctioned wood, the study revealed that a significant percentage of certified products tested had incorrect claims for their wood fibre.” it said.
“These results indicate that existing oversight processes, such as audits, are not sufficient to guarantee accurate claims, and both outcomes and efficiencies can be improved significantly by data-driven, scientific verification, which could be most effectively mainstreamed through integrity programs.”
The researchers tested the wood using stable isotope ratio analysis, comparing the birch samples’ chemical makeup with a reference database from northern and eastern Europe. Scientists then used markers caused by differences in light, soil, and water conditions to estimate the origin.
According to Jade Saunders, World Forest ID’s executive director, “The UK has been a leader in sanctions, trade laws, and certification schemes, but these are only as good as the tools with which they are implemented.”
“Chemical traceability is a whole new way of thinking about what is in our supply chains. We know we can only solve problems if we can see them, and in this study, we saw them very clearly, so it is time for the government and guardians of supply-chain integrity to step up and start solving.”
FSC said it took any indication of potential fraud seriously and welcomed the World Forest ID research, adding that it was actively investing in new techniques to ensure reliability in supply chains. Meanwhile, PEFC said the findings needed to be placed in the context that 14% of samples were associated with its technology, telling the Guardian that the analysis should not be used to generalise the effectiveness of certification.
The EU’s €1.5B Lie: Illegal Russian Timber Is Everywhere in Europe!
The new analysis comes after a report published by UK-based ENGO Earthsight alleged that more than €1.5 billion worth of Russian timber has been smuggled into the European Union since June 2022, with all 27 states implicated in a ‘blood trade’ that has led to 500,000 cubic metres entering Europe via friendly third-party actors, including China, Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Georgia.
“Profit-hungry smugglers find it all too easy to launder plywood through third countries and into Europe via soft entry points,” according to Tara Ganesh, Earthsight’s head of timber and sanctions. “It’s so easy that as much as a fifth of all the birch ply on sale in Europe today is thought to be illegal Russian blood timber.”
Of the member states, the largest volumes come from Poland (the current president of the EU), Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Estonia: “Seven of the top ten Russian birch ply exporters are still supplying the EU,” Earthlight said, with two of these companies linked to oligarchs that met with Putin on the day Russia invaded Ukraine.
“One, Alexei Mordashov, is on the EU’s sanctions list, whilst the other, Vladimir Yevtushenkov, is the main shareholder of Russia’s largest logging firm.”
- To learn more about the shadow trade in Russian lumber and why Poland is ground zero for Russian and Belarussian timber circumventing sanctions and entering the European Union, click here for Wood Central’s special feature.
