Tropical timber trade struggles in Europe

Reuters Financial Report

Rising prices, economic recession and environmentalist lobbying to protect the world's rain forests have resulted in a shrinking market for tropical wood in Europe.

Speakers at International Tropical Timber Council (ITTC) meeting in Ghana's capital Accra said plastics and other materials were taking more of the main market on the continent -- doors and window frames. But with signs of economic improvement in Europe some delegates predicted that the market could pick up -- especially if producers settle on a system of certification showing wood coming from sustainably managed forests.

"By means of a certificate I am absolutely sure that the German import of tropical hardwoods will increase drastically," said Hinrich Stoll, chairman of timber trader Hinrich Feldmeyer.

Gerhard Schmok of Germany's economics ministry said the use non-certified tropical timber frames was banned in parts of Berlin for environmental reasons.

Stoll said house refurbishment in eastern Germany, following reunification with the west, had produced a buoyant window and door market that was being lost to tropical timber due to the lack of a trade certificate.

"The only way we can lift the ban...on tropical timber in public buildings is to have a certificate which is valuable, transparent and which proves to the public that this timber is coming from a sustainably managed source," he added.

Some Asian delegates, notably from Malaysia and Indonesia, did not see the need to rush into a labelling scheme. "The basis for product certification has not actually been established. We are not sure if it has any direct correlation with sustainable forest management," said poducer spokesman Amha Buang of Malaysia's Primary Industries Ministry.

"Certification should be a consequence of sustainable forest management, not the other way round," he said. Ad Wesselink, a director of the Union for the Tropical Timber Trade in the European Union (UCBT), spelled out the problems facing the trade in the Europe of the 1990s. "For some countries environmental aspects and for others different market powers are threatening the use of tropical hardwood," he said. "Most of the substitution is towards PVC and plastics in general which cannot be an environmentally sound solution," he said. PVC windows are banned in Berlin on environmental grounds.