South Africa’s commercial plantation forests are mostly FSC certified. That’s not a small thing. It represents a significant and ongoing investment by forest managers in responsible practice, and it’s reflected in the cost of the logs leaving those plantations. For foresters, that commitment is well understood. The problem is what happens to it further down the chain.
Value that needs to travel
For sawmillers, the issue is straightforward. Certified logs arrive at the mill carrying a status that has real commercial value for domestic green building projects, in export markets, and increasingly in retail supply chains where procurement teams are asking for documentation, not just assurances.
But without FSC Chain of Custody certification at the mill, that status doesn’t survive processing. The material’s certified origin is effectively lost the moment the log is broken down, and no FSC claim can be passed on to the customer.
Chain of Custody is the mechanism that keeps certified material’s value intact through transformation from log to sawn timber, from sawn timber to engineered product, from component to finished piece. For sawmillers and mass timber producers already working with certified input material, the question worth asking is whether the premium embedded in that material is being recovered commercially or quietly disappearing at the point of processing.
Read the full story here – https://www.woodbizafrica.co.za/march-2026-issue-57/22/