Vietnam increases exports of certified wood and wood products

According to the Vietnam Timber and Forest Products Association, in 2020, wood and wood product exports were 12.37 billion USD; in 2021, it was 14.8 billion USD; in 2022, it was 16 billion USD; in 2023, it was 13.37 billion USD.

Xuất khẩu gỗ và sản phẩm gỗ và lâm sản năm 2023 chỉ thu về 13,5 tỷ USD

In 2021, the export of wood and wood products declared with FSC certification was 188.01 million USD, accounting for 1.3% of the total export turnover of wood and wood products; in 2022, Vietnam exported wood and wood products declared with FSC certification was 267.78 million USD, accounting for 1.7%, up 42.4% compared to 2021; in 11 months of 2023, Vietnam exported wood and wood products declared with FSC certification was 226.85 million USD, accounting for 2%.

Vietnam increases exports of FSC certified wood and wood products with the number of enterprises with FSC COC certification as of December 1, 2023 being 1,654 enterprises.

According to the Vietnam Timber and Forest Products Association, Vietnam has two sources of FSC-certified wood materials for the wood processing industry for export and domestic consumption, including imported wood materials and domestically grown forests.

Import turnover of wood and wood products declared with FSC certification accounts for a small proportion. In 2022, Vietnam imported 66.61 million USD of FSC wood out of 3 billion USD of wood and wood product imports, accounting for 2.2%.

The area of FSC-certified forests in Vietnam has been increasing in recent years. As of December 2023, the FSC Forest Stewardship Council estimated that the area of FSC-certified forests was approximately 282,960 hectares, accounting for approximately 64% of the total planted forest area in Vietnam.

However, according to Mr. Tran Le Huy - Vice President and General Secretary of the Binh Dinh Timber and Forest Products Association - the current supply of FSC wood from domestic plantations is still limited. FSC products mainly focus on furniture, pellets and pulp.

“Domestic wood resources are not enough to meet the demand for exporting wooden furniture and there is no FSC-FM certification; while according to the requirements of Europe and the United States, 70% of raw materials must be FSC certified, the remaining 30% must be wood of origin,” Mr. Tran Le Huy shared.

Việt Nam tăng xuất khẩu gỗ và sản phẩm gỗ có chứng chỉ

FSC certified plantation forest in Nghe An. Photo by Nguyen Hanh

Vietnam is a major exporter of wood and wood products in the world. Buyers’ decisions regarding legal sourcing of wood and requiring FSC-certified wood are impacting the entire supply chain.

Currently, in some developed countries in the world, FSC is a mandatory certificate if you want to bring wood products to the consumer market. Therefore, in order for Vietnamese wood products to have a position in the market, especially targeting large markets, they need to change right now.

Sharing at the 2023 FSC Asia Business Conference held in mid-December 2023, a representative of Costco - the world's third largest retailer with many different products including wood and wood products - said that wood, paper, and fiber products will have a certain impact on the ecosystem, so we try to provide quality products, with stable prices and trade in FSC certified products.

Similarly, as a major retailer in the US market - representative of Wiiliam Sonam Inc said, the company also set a new goal that by 2025, 50% of the company's products on the shelves will be FSC certified.

By cooperating and participating in the supply chain, Wiiliam Sonam Inc is trying to increase awareness and responsible consumption of products. On the other hand, this is also a way for businesses to boost exports to the EU market.

In Vietnam, many businesses have invested in FSC wood material areas to seize market opportunities. Hoa Phat, one of the companies that has strongly developed FSC wood areas, through cooperation with forest growers, has developed an output of 15 thousand tons/year, focusing on rubber and teak wood plantations.

The wood industry is aiming to develop legal raw materials, in order to implement the Government's commitments and actions for the net zero target by 2050 at the COP26 Conference. In addition to the requirements from major export markets, the use of legal wood, especially certified wood, is the direction for sustainable and long-term development of the Vietnamese wood industry.

According to Ms. Vu Thi Que Anh - FSC representative in Vietnam, businesses need to improve their capacity and update new FSC standards, guidelines and market trends to ensure raw materials at reasonable prices and an intact supply chain to ensure traceability.

The formation of chain linkages will contribute to ensuring raw material sources for production, meeting the requirements of major export markets such as the EU, North America, and Japan with increasingly high requirements on wood traceability such as the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and FSC certification.

To meet the increasing demand for certified wood products, Ms. Vu Thi Que Anh said that more involvement from the Government, ministries, sectors and localities, especially wood exporting enterprises, is needed to balance processing capacity and planted forest raw material areas.

FSC is the abbreviation of the Forest Stewardship Council and is also a type of forest certification managed by this council. FSC certification aims to verify the origin of wood, the exploitation and production process in accordance with the law, meeting environmental protection standards.

In particular, two important certifications are FSC-FM (wood materials originating from sustainably developed forests) and FSC-COC (the chain of exploitation, processing to finished products, identifying materials from well-managed forests, connected in the production process).

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