City Forests is FSC Certified
City Forests Ltd was first awarded Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certification by the international certification programme as from the 24/10/2000. Following a full re-audit, Certification was renewed for a further five years in October 2005 (view our current certificate). Conferring FSC certification on City Forests Ltd is recognition that the company practices meet FSC requirements for environmentally and socially responsible forest management practices in its Otago forest operations.
Demand for "environmentally friendly" wood products is growing rapidly in the international market and City Forests Ltd are excited about the opportunities that FSC certification presented the company. FSC certification was one of the first steps of the company's strategy to add greater value to the company's 16,100ha of plantation forest.
What is Forest Certification?
Forest certification is the process of assessing forests and forest management practices against an agreed set of environmental standards and the subsequent issuing of a certificate to confirm that they are in conformance with the standards' requirements. By certifying our forests, we are saying that they are managed in an environmentally, economically and socially responsibly way. A copy of the company's Forest Management Plan is available from our office, and a summary of recent forest monitoring exercises can be found on this website.
Why Certify?
One of the main goals of forest certification is to support sustainable forestry management by providing market-based incentives. Adopting an environmental certification system provides an environmental management system, creating a process to address environmental concerns by identifying and controlling operations that produce adverse environmental impacts.
Who is the Forest Stewardship Council?
The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is an international non-profit organisation founded in 1993 to support environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world's forests. They have developed ten Principles and Criteria for forest stewardship and using these, all forests aiming for certification are evaluated by independent, accredited organisations. Certified forests are visited on a regular basis, to ensure they continue to comply with the Principles and Criteria. Products originating from FSC certified forests are eligible to carry the FSC logo.
Link to the FSC homepage
What is the chain of custody?
Chain of custody is the process to verify the source of a certified wood product. As the wood from the forest goes down the production chain and is processed into different products, so too does proof of its source. This means that the final product and any intermediate products can have the FSC logo identifying that they come from a certified forest. Only when this tracking has been independently verified, is the product eligible to carry the FSC logo. City Forests Ltd has been awarded a certification of FSC Mixed Sources (minimum 70%), on certificate SGS-COC-2509.
The company's Wood Processing plant has chain of custody certification.
