Retail giant Kingfisher, which owns the B&Q and Castorama home improvement retailers, says its FSC-certified timber sales increased by 2% in the 12 months to February 2009.
Sales of FSC-certified timber, kitchen, garden furniture and flooring at the group’s 800 stores in Europe and Asia for the year 2008/09 equated to 2.56 million m³ roundwood equivalent. That’s 47% of all the group’s total timber product sales.
“Whilst we continue to face challenges, we have managed to buy more FSC and make it more available,” said Jamie Lawrence, forest and timber adviser at Kingfisher.
The group said it had increased FSC product availability through product and supplier action plans, working with new brands and focusing on new store openings such as in the New Malden flagship store.
Kingfisher now specifies only FSC certification for key tropical hardwood products, and where FSC material is not available, the group must source from companies committed to achieving FSC certification.
Last year B&Q UK achieved FSC chain of custody certification because carpentry tradesmen wanted certified product for their projects, especially local authority work. This represents a change, as DIY retailers have traditionally been seen as the end of the supply chain selling to end users, so chain of custody was not really necessary.
But now one in 10 B&Q customers is a tradesperson.
