Issue PEFC recognized accreditations

As an accreditation body you play an important role in assuring the independence and performance of certification bodies issuing PEFC certificates.

You may have been requested by a certification body to provide an accreditation against a PEFC endorsed forest management standard and/or the PEFC Chain of Custody standard. Having a PEFC accreditation program enables you to provide services to certification bodies seeking to carry out PEFC certification in your country.

We only accept accreditations from ABs that are members of the International Accreditation Forum (IAF), or one of the regional accreditation groups such as the European co-operation for Accreditation (EA) of the Pacific Accreditation Cooperation (PAC).

We then have specific additional requirements, depending on the type of certification for which the accreditation is provided.

For forest management certification, our PEFC endorsed national forest certification systems will include specific performance requirements based on our Technical Document Annex 6. This includes for example the public availability of summary audit reports and stakeholder consultations in the certification process.

For PEFC chain of custody certification, the certification body will need to comply with our PEFC ST 2003. Additionally, your AB needs to be a signatory of the Multilateral Recognition Agreement for product certification (MLA). PEFC ST 2003 provides all technical details for the accreditation.

To find out more, please contact us at training@pefc.org.

Training requirements

As you are assessing the performance of certification bodies issuing PEFC certificates, it is important to have sufficient expertise on the PEFC system and the PEFC Chain of Custody standard within the assessment team. We find it equally important that, like the auditors, you are kept up to date on our expectations, clarifications and interpretations to the standard.

Many accreditation bodies have solved this by using external technical experts with proven knowledge of the PEFC standard. Others have ensured that their personnel received sufficient training. 

We offer different options to have your personnel or technical experts trained. As a first option they could attend an auditor training course. A second possibility is to send them to one of the dedicated accreditation body trainings that we organize periodically.

Technical calibration training for accreditation bodies

In January 2020, we published the revised international standards for PEFC Chain of Custody (ST 2002), PEFC Trademarks (ST 2001) and Certification Body Requirements for Chain of Custody (ST 2003). These three standards entered into force on 14 February 2020, with a 24-month transition period.

In order to support accreditation bodies, we are offering technical calibration training to update your representatives on the key changes to these three standards. This technical calibration aims at providing you with the technical background necessary to conduct your accreditation tasks. 

You can find all the upcoming training for accreditation bodies on the training section of our website. Make sure you sign up to our newsletter (at the bottom of this page) to ensure you get all the latest training news and dates, or follow us on Twitter.

You can also contact us for more information at: training@pefc.org.