The allegations come in a study by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which claims it recorded Schweighofer officials offering to buy illegal timber from investigators posing as buyers and filmed unmarked logs being delivered at the company’s depots.
Schweighofer, Romania’s biggest softwood processor, said it was “appalled” by false accusations and dubious procedural methods of environmental protection organisations In a statement, the company said knowledge of the facts and accurate observation of these facts showed that no such dealings or unlawful acts had occurred.
Schweighofer replied to the accusation of it processing round timber without a “legal transport stamp” by saying that such general “transport stamps” do not exist for all round timber on transport routes.
“In case of logs, the labelling obligations only apply on the route from the forest to the first processing stations,” it said.
“There these logs are generally cut up into several pieces for transportation to the sawmills – for example, a 12m-long log is divided into three pieces of round timber, each four metres long. Therefore it is logical and completely conformant with the regulations that only one of these remaining parts bears the stamp directly applied in the forest.”
It also refuted the EIA video evidence, which purportedly shows Schweighofer officials saying they are prepared to buy illegal timber. The company said the material was “at the very least severely edited”.
“Holzindustrie Schweighofer only purchases timber from legal sources,” it added. “Every single timber delivery is rigorously inspected through all possible means at the plant gates for the correctness of the original documents, and also by comparing them with the national database.”
Any purchase of illegal timber, it said, would not have got past the stringent inspections at the mill gates.
Schweighofer has offered to engage with all environmental protection organisations interested in the discussion or the implementation of projects for the improvement of the forestry situation in Romania.
