FSC withdrew from Russia

On expressing additional confidence in national forest certification systems

Forest Certification LLC announces the termination of cooperation with the international Voluntary Forest Certification system FSC as an accredited auditing company.

We recently turned 15 years old, 13 of them we held FSC Forest Management and Supply Chain accreditation. During this time, as an audit company, we have achieved unique results, having gone from an office with two employees in Bratsk to 1,500+ certificates in twenty countries around the world. We have always worked with the most difficult regions: India, China, and the CIS countries. But Russia has always been the main market, and here we have become the absolute leader in the number of FSC certificates issued. By the end of last year, we recorded revenue of several hundred million rubles. Not bad for a service company in a narrow market, is it?

In addition to growing our business, we have always been proud of the team we managed to assemble: at the peak of our activity, more than 40 top-level professionals worked with us in Russia alone.
Due to the dramatic change in the geopolitical situation, the FSC system initially suspended certification in Russia, practically halting any activity in this market. The ban on the export of Russian timber products to the most marginal markets (Europe and the USA) has worsened the crisis. Since April of this year, we have conducted 99% fewer FSC supervisory audits, and revenue has fallen by 95%.
Under these conditions, the single accreditation body ASI (Germany) has not reduced its accounts by a dollar, and the pressure in some areas has only increased. Additionally, ASI has introduced a so-called two-tier accreditation system, which will begin operating at the end of this year. According to the new requirements, audit companies will need to obtain additional accreditation from the national accreditation body.

In particular, Russian companies will have to obtain this additional accreditation only from the US national authority, which is currently legally impossible for Russian audit firms and companies owned by Russians. Approximately the same thing happened earlier with our SBP accreditation, which also came under the jurisdiction of the United States.

Thus, even at the basic level, there is a consistent policy of squeezing Russian audit companies out of this business. As the head of Forest Certification LLC, I have twice contacted the CEO of FSC Int directly. and both times I didn’t even get at least a formal answer.
In the context of the forced closure of the business, which also generates only losses, in the absence of prospects for the return of the FSC to Russia and changes in the rules of two-level accreditation, we decided to exit the FSC certification business.

Date of publication 24.08.2022