Archive for category: newsletter

The International Tropical Timber Technical Association (ATIBT) has joined the STTC as Partner.

The ATIBT’s core role is to support development of international trade in tropical timber, both as a viable business, and a means of helping maintain the tropical forest and the habitats and biodiversity it supports.

André de Boer, Secretary General of the European Timber Trade Federation, which is a fellow STTC partner and manages the European STTC programme, including its sustainable procurement policy funding initiative, welcomed the organisation on board.

“We’re very pleased that the ATIBT has joined the STTC,” he said. “Both have the ultimate aim to grow trade in sustainably sourced tropical timber to help incentivise spread of sustainable forest management, and ATIBT’s STTC partnership should be mutually beneficial.”

ATIBT President Robert Hunink agreed that the two bodies shared key goals and that their collaboration could help achieve them.

“ATIBT is aware that, besides helping to increase market demand for certified wood in the traditional timber species, the partnership with STTC is also very important for the introduction and promotion of the so-called ‘lesser used species’,” he said. “Successful promotion of these species is especially crucial for the economic viability of operators in the Congo Basin and, to maintain a balanced species composition in the forest. ATIBT is looking forward to share its broad experience of more than 65 years with STTC.”

ATIBT’s move was also greeted enthusiastically by Hans Stout, programme director of STTC founder-partner, Netherlands-based IDH, the Sustainable Trade initiative.

“IDH is delighted to have ATIBT as an official STTC partner, which is in fact a formalisation of a long and excellent cooperation between IDH and ATIBT,” he said. “ATIBT was already active in the working groups of the STTC and we also cooperated with ATIBT in our Congo Basin [Tropical Timber] Program.”

At the ATIBT International Forum last October, Mr de Boer presented on the ETTF’s new ITTO and STTC-backed online database, which combines business information for mainly tropical producer countries and details of their forest and timber legislation relevant to EU Timber Regulation due diligence.

The Forum also featured the ATIBT’s first Architects Workshop, aimed at developing use of tropical timber in construction.

The European Sustainable Tropical Timber Coalition (STTC) is moving to the next stage of its programme to boost EU sales of certified tropical timber.
The new phase involves closer strategic partnership with the European Timber Trade Federation (ETTF), re-energised communications and membership drives and, critically, a funding initiative to back private and public sector Action Plans and projects.

The STTC started in 2013 in response to a long-term fall in EU tropical timber sales, with its main architect, the Netherlands-based IDH-the Sustainable Trade Initiative, backed by partners from the timber sector, retail, end-use industries, government, and NGOs.

The STTC’s concern was that the EU tropical timber business decline would not only deprive end users and consumers of this valuable, versatile material, it could also potentially disincentivise tropical producers from introducing sustainable forest management practices.

The first two years saw the STTC lay its foundations with communication, promotional, business linking and technical projects.

In the current phase two, it aims to broaden its Coalition and become more proactive still. The ETTF, a founding STTC partner, has taken an oversight role, help grow membership and administer the funding programme. The latter, said Federation Secretary General André de Boer was particularly important. “Concrete procurement commitments are what creates real impact,” he said. Timber businesses, he explained, can receive match-funding for activities in the framework of an STTC Action Plan for up to 30% of the cost, or €15,000. Federations are eligible for grants up to €30,000 for developing sustainable sourcing policies. In addition, STTC partners and participants can submit project proposals with a requested STTC contribution up to €50,000 if it contributes to STTC objectives.

The new website – www.europeansttc.com –lays out STTC goals and the all-round case for using certified tropical timber. It provides technical data, tropical timber application case studies, lists STTC partners and members and explains how to join and apply for funding.

The STTC’s initial target is a 50% increase in EU certified tropical timber sales over 2013 levels by 2020.

“There’s increasing awareness that avoiding tropical timber does not ensure forest conservation,” said Mark van Benthem, Probos Senior Advisor and STTC Consultant. “And in verified sustainably sourced tropical material we’ve a great story to tell, with definitive evidence that timber is often the environmentally right choice.”

Sustainably sourced tropical timber species out-performed competitor materials in a demanding life cycle analysis project backed by the European STTC.

Eric de Munck of Netherlands–based timber research body Centrum Hout led the trials, which pitted tropical timbers against key market rivals in the manufacture of marine application pile planking and window frames.

The pile planking life cycle analysis (LCA) project was proposed to the STTC by the Netherlands Timber Trade Association (NTTA) and other industry players due to the fact that tropical timber faces increasingly strong competition in this market from steel, PVC, plus other varieties of wood.  The research team also said that existing environmental data for the species used in this application was out-dated and unreliable.

The study, undertaken in association with the FSC Netherlands, has already generated impressive figures in favour of tropical timber in terms of cradle to grave environmental cost per square metre.

The species used were sustainably sourced African Azobé and Okan and South American Angelim vermelho. They were evaluated against two types of PVC planking – one comprising all virgin raw material, the other recycled – and steel.

The researchers chose a popular form of pile planking and applied equivalent LCA methods to all materials types.  Preliminary results showed that, over a 30-year lifespan, the environmental performance of tropical timber planking is 24 times better than virgin-material PVC and 21 times better than recycled.  Compared to steel it’s 133 times better.

The final LCA data from the research will be added to the Dutch Environmental Database and international data resources Ecoinvent and ILCD (the International Reference Life Cycle database). The results will also be publicised via the trade media, presentations to industry events and direct to tropical timber end users and specifiers.

The window frame LCA, which is being undertaken in association with the Netherlands Woodworking Industry Association, is using sustainably sourced African, Asian and South American reference wood species. The competitor materials in this case are softwood, modified softwood and PVC and initial results are expected by the end of next March.

Both studies will be completed and implemented by the end of next June, with the outcomes widely publicised.

The Green Deal initiative, aimed at making certified sustainable timber the Netherlands’ market mainstream norm, has gone a good way to achieving its goal in its three-year life.

Seventeen European importers from six countries participated in an ETTF-backed trade mission to Suriname where they learned about the opportunities and challenges for developing the country’s sustainable timber export sector.