Trade Collaboration Key to Tropical Legality

Global hardwood specialist Danzer does not see the EU Timber Regulation or FLEGT voluntary partnership agreements (VPAs) as missions accomplished yet. But it recognises them as key additions to timber’s legality assurance armoury and believes they can become more significant. Mike Jeffree reports.

- Mike Jeffree

Mr. Hans-Joachim Danzer is an ardent advocate for tropical timber, the tropical timber trade and, crucially, getting a true picture of the business, its ethos and potential out to the marketplace. The chief executive of Austria-based Danzer, one of the leading global hardwood players, enthuses about the material’s diversity, ability to substitute less environmentally sound man-made material and capacity for reinvention.

Danzer’s timber mix today is around one-third tropical, two-thirds temperate with the former managed by its subsidiary, Interholco. It sells worldwide and makes everything from engineered timber components, to hi-tech mouldable and even metal-striated veneers for car dashboards.

It also recently developed advanced cutting technology to make the valuable hardwood resource go further. Against that background, it’s understandable the company is equally impassioned by the tropical timber trade, in Danzer’s words, “too often being criminalised in the public eye”.

By committing to responsible sourcing, Danzer and the Interholco management see the trade as a driver for supplier uptake of sustainable forest management. But thanks, they believe,to “misunderstanding, poor communication and law-abiding companies’ being tarnished by the remaining illegal trade”, it is still commonly perceived as a driver of deforestation.

Market consequences

“Wood is the most modern, versatile product, yet it’s been bad mouthed for decades,” said Danzer. “So today we stuff houses and offices with artificial non-recyclable products, because consumers are too afraid of buying timber.”