Sustainability Policy

Timber product sourcing policy statement

Furniture Village Ltd is committed to only working with suppliers using sustainable raw materials. To meet this commitment, we want to ensure our suppliers have correctly implemented an FSC (or equivalent) Chain of Custody procedure, and can systematically confirm that products supplied to us are appropriately certified.

Imports of timber and timber products to the European market are regulated by the European Timber Regulation, which came into force in March 2013. Under this regulation, Furniture Village is primarily considered a “Trader”. The definition of Trader is: a company buying timber and / or timber products from another company within the EU.

As a Trader we are obliged under EUTR to work with a due diligence system to minimise the risk of putting illegal timber or derived product on the market. However, Furniture Village is going beyond compliance, and wishes to secure sustainability for its supply chain where timber is involved.

Furniture Village will not source timber for its products from:

• Forests or forest product suppliers that do not comply with all relevant national and international legislation relating to the trade in forest products.
• High Conservation value forests where these are recognised nationally or regionally, unless these forests are progressing towards credible forest certification in a time-bound, stepwise and transparent manner.
• Protected areas, parks or similar areas where harvesting operations are not complementary to responsible forest management.
• Forests which are currently being converted to other land uses, or forests that have been converted since 1994.
• Forests which are in areas of armed conflict or civil unrest where there is a direct relationship between the forest products trade and the funding of such conflicts. 

Our expectations around due diligence for ourselves as a business organisation and our suppliers is that the following three elements must be systematically exchanged and captured, to ensure we play our role in securing forests for the future, as well as for our business interest directly.

1. Information

• To clearly document our supply chains.
• To maintain records of the product sourced by order, including:
  • Records of the species sourced and forest of origin. 
  • Records of all timber and wood derived products in wooden furniture including sub suppliers of finished components that form part of our supplier’s finished product.            

2. Risk assessment procedure

• Identification of low risk and high risk supply chains.
• Assessment of legal harvesting, sustainability and traceability.             

3. Risk mitigation procedure

• Education of all suppliers on the EU Regulation.
• Agree a timetable of timely implementation with each supplier.
• Ensure all suppliers are FSC certified (or equivalent) to meet our sourcing preference.

If it is demonstrated at any time that any supplier is using wood from the above mentioned unwanted sources, we will promptly take the appropriate actions which includes ceasing purchases from such sources