Chain of Custody ( CoC )

Trends, opportunity and implementation

By : ACC (Asmindo Certification Care) PUSAT - Jakarta

Chain of Custody has currently been well heard among the wood processing industry in Indonesia as well as worldwide. This term was familiar in Indonesia since mid 90’s when Perhutani became the first forest concession who achieved FSC certification as a well managed forest.
In this article, I will try to share my personal experience dealing with chain of custody, while at the field doing consulting services, learning from various standards, as well as interviewing business owners in the furniture industry, flooring and paper industry.
It turns out that chain of custody or in more specific term, wood certification, has become a trend in USA and EU in the past 4 years. Buyers from these markets have started to demand COC certification, whether FSC, PEFC or at the least VLO. Even several tradeshow managements in Europe have required some kind of wood certification to participate in the events.. If not FSC than the participants should be able to demonstrate that their wood has been sourced legally.
It is obvious than, that most exporting countries have taken steps to improve their procurement policy in order to ensure that wood entering their countries has been sourced from well managed forests.
The next question is of course the readiness of producers to fulfill the above requirement. Implementing COC itself is not such a big headache. The most important foundation is the commitment from the top management. Once the top management believes that chain of custody is a tool to open and maintain its market than the implementation at the operation floor – upstream to downstream - is much easier.
There are several main aspects that a company should maintain in the implementation of COC, such as :

1. Quality Management
In quality management, the company should :
a. Appoint a management representative who is responsible for the whole
implementation of COC in the company. The management representative is
assisted by a team responsible for COC in each division.
b. Establish and maintain a standard operational procedure for the entire
operation in the company. For example : purchasing procedure, receiving
and storing procedure, labeling procedure, shipping procedure etc.
c. Establish and maintain a training procedure as well as to define the
qualification and training measure required by each personnel responsible
for each procedure.
d. Establish and maintain a procedure to ensure that all documentation and
records are kept at least for 5 years.
.
2. Certification Scope
There are 2 things that we have to provide to complete certification scope :
a. Product Group
In the product group the company should specify which product will be claimed
as certified. The product Group schedule should include species, raw
material category, FSC claim of the product, and the type of product. The
company should also specify the system used to control the FSC claim, whether
transfer, percentage or credit.
b. Outsourcing
All outsourcing activities should be bound with an agreement between the
company and the subcontractors to ensure that each subcontractor follows all
the requirements set by the company.

3. Raw Material Sourcing
The company should specify the category of its raw material. Firstly the
company should separate if their material is certified or non certified. If the
material is certified, according to FSC standard, the raw material is further
categorized as recycled (post consumer and pre consumer), pure (fresh cut
timber), mixed, controlled wood, and controlled material. If the company buys
certified material, they need to ensure that the vendor’s certificate is still
valid and the supplied material is included in vendor’s product group, by
accessing ww.fsc-info.org.

4. Receiving and Storing
On receiving of certified material the company should separate, mark and record
each item with care, physically and documented. This is important to avoid any
mistake in the subsequent processing stages such as in production, finished
product storing, or even shipment.

5. Shipment
In the shipment process, the company should ensure that they have quoted the FSC
claim of the product and the company’s FSC certificate number in shipment
invoice and other shipping or transport documentation such as packing list and
bill of lading.

6. Volume Control
Volume control is mandatory in COC to ensure that the company has utilized a
proper proportion of raw material and convert it into finished product. The
volume control includes volume of incoming raw material, raw material used in
production, raw material in stock, compared with volume of finished product,
sold and in stock. These numbers should be in balance with the conversion factor
employed by the company. In this essence volume control plays an important tool
for company management to see if their production efficiency has met their
expectation.

7. Marketing, Advertising and Public Information
Once the company has passed FSC certification audit, they will be entitled to
use FSC label on product and or FSc logo for promotional use. However prior to
using the trademarks the company should get a written proposal from the
Certification Body.
The above is a simple description of how to implement FSC COC in a company.
Normally to some extent a company has already implemented their own traceability
procedure. However some requirements in the FSC standard sometimes are missing
and should be included in those procedures. For more information of FSC
standards and requirement, you can click www.fsc.org.
Happy browsing !