Survey of chain of custody certification in the countries of central and south Europe

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the conditions in the chain of custody certification in the region of the Central and South Europe. A multinational survey involving chain of custody certificates holders in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia was conducted to identify the understanding of the concept of forest certification as environmental, economic and social tool and to determine incentives for its implementation by companies. Results indicate that surveyed companies demonstrated a high level of understanding of the chain of custody certification concept. However, they link forest certification mainly to the issues of legality, tracing the origin source of supply and prevention from illegal logging. The main expected benefits following from certification are those of improvement of external company image followed by business performance factors such as penetrating new markets, increase of sales volume, expanded market share and the increase of profit margin.