South East Fibre Exports Pty. Ltd. (SEFE), a subsidiary of Nippon Paper Industries Co., Ltd. (President: Masatomo Nakamura) that produces and exports wood chips in New South Wales, acquired Australia's unique forest certification, the Australian Forestry Standard (AFS) on October 18. This completes Nippon Paper Industries' procedures for obtaining the AFS certification for all of its Tree Farms in Australia (about 52,000 ha).

For these forests, the procedures for acquiring the ISO14001 certification for environmental management systems were completed by the end of March last year. This means that Nippon Paper Industries has been approved by third party organizations in terms of both performance of sustainable forest operation and its management system.

 

The Nippon Paper Group clearly indicates that it will "acquire forest certification for all Company-owned forests by 2008" in the Action Guideline of the Charter on the Environment. So far, the procedures for acquiring ISO14001 certification have been completed for Tree Farms in Chile, Australia and South Africa. In addition, the Company has been certified by FSC and AFS—forestry certifications that lead to labeling—for its Tree Farms in South Africa and Australia, respectively. Procedures are underway for obtaining Chile's unique forest certification Certforchile for Tree Farm in Chile.

 

In addition to the acquisition of these forest certifications, Nippon Paper Industries is promoting the Tree Farm Initiative, an overseas afforestation to foster hardwood resources. The Company also aims to procure all imported hardwood chips sourced from certified forests or tree farms by 2008. Further initiatives will be taken to foster and procure from sustainable forest resources.

 

Note 1 AFS, Certforchile

These are forest certification systems in Australia and Chile that are mutually recognized with The Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), the world's largest forest certification system.

PEFC examines forest certification systems developed by each country and encourages mutual recognition among these systems, based on inter-governmental processes for sustainable forest management.