PEFC makes good business sense for New Zealand

3 April 2014 News

“With the development of a New Zealand Standard on sustainable forest management underway now, the opportunity is there to give people the choice in the world market to buy New Zealand wood and know that it’s managed to the best standards in the world,” said Ben Gunneberg, Secretary General of PEFC, during a recent interview with Larry Williams on New Zealand radio’s NewstalkZB.

Over the past year stakeholders have been working together to develop a New Zealand standard, based on the standard used in Australia, with the aim of publishing it in 2014 and subsequently seeking PEFC endorsement.

“We are looking forward to having a look at the new standard and seeing whether it meets PEFC’s rigorous International Benchmarks. If the standard meets the international benchmarks, this will mean that all the wood that comes out underneath that standard can be sold as PEFC certified worldwide,” explained Mr. Gunneberg.

“New Zealand will be amongst the best wood in the world, reaching the best benchmarks for sustainability. There is only about 10% of world’s forest certified and New Zealand will be amongst them, and that’s a really exciting prospect.”

In another recent interview with Radio New Zealand, Mr. Gunneberg stressed that the time is now right for the New Zealand forestry industry to start working towards signing up with this new industry standard.

With Chinese national forest certification system having achieved PEFC endorsement in February 2014, a PEFC-endorsed New Zealand standard will provide local forest owners and companies along the timber value chain with market access to Chinese companies, which are expected to increasingly ask for PEFC-certified timber and wood-based products. It therefore “makes good business sense for everyone to be able to offer that choice [of PEFC], and it’s good for the jobs here [in New Zealand] and it’s good for industry as a whole.”