The US Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has provided new evidence to the business practices by the Austrian company “Holzindustrie Schweighofer” (Schweighofer) in Romania. Sources: Globe News Wire, Market Watch
The report documents how Schweighofer processes large amounts of illegally harvested timber from Romanian forests into semi-finished wood products and biomass, selling the products throughout the European Union.
“Schweighofer is one of the largest timber companies in Europe and unfortunately a major driver of illegal logging in Romania,” said Alexander von Bismarck, Executive Director of EIA.
Also today, WWF filed a complaint at the Federal Forest Office in Vienna for violations of the European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR) and calls for a full investigation of the allegations against Schweighofer.
Earlier this year, two videos showing Schweighofer purchasing managers accepting illegal wood were released.
This new report follows two years of investigations and details, for the first time, the extent of the destruction caused by the high volumes of illegal wood reaching Schweighofer’s Romanian mills.
EIA found that over 50% of logging in Romania is illegal, which includes illegal cutting in national parks, clear-cutting, overharvesting, use of false permits, and logging on stolen land.
In its investigation, EIA identifies and documents actual cases of each type of illegal logging in the forest and found that in nearly every case the wood was on its way to, or ended up at, Schweighofer’s mills.
EIA’s report also finds that Schweighofer has caused massive damage to the furniture industry in Romania by pushing up prices and buying out timber stocks.
In order to protect their business model, Schweighofer actively tried to prevent a new forest law in Romania that limits the share one single company can have in the national timber market.
In a letter to the Romanian Prime Minister, CEO Gerald Schweighofer threatened to sue Romania in international courts and to lay off all of the company’s Romanian employees should the new law not be retracted.
WWF has, based on available report and information, now filed a complaint according to the EUTR in Austria.
The complaint is addressed to the Federal Forest Office (Bundesamt für Wald) which is the responsible EUTR authority in Austria.
The EUTR came into force in 2013 and prohibits putting illegally logged timber and timber products onto the EU market.
Schweighofer has existed in Austria for 400 years. Having sold its Austrian sawmills to Stora Enso in the late 1990s, Schweighofer has been active in Romania since 2002, where the company now owns three sawmills and two factories.
The company’s main export products are sawn lumber and biomass, in addition to other semi-finished products.
Sixty percent of Schweighofer’s exports within the European Union are biomass in the form of pellets, briquettes, and wood chips.
Within 13 years, the company became one of the largest wood processors in Europe, with an annual turnover of 465 million Euros.
