Lost in translation

The tallest residential tower in Western Europe was revealed to contain illegally sourced hardwood earlier this year. But shouldn't the companies involved have known better? Ross MacMillan reports.

IT TOOK pressure group the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) a matter of hours to expose the latest high-profile use of illegally logged timber in the UK.

The brief was simple, says an EIA spokesman. “We picked out the highest profile project we could to demonstrate illegal logging taking place. We were aiming to collect yet more evidence to push the government in to legislating against the sale of illegal timber in this country.”

And they couldn’t have gone more high profile than Manchester’s Beetham Tower – the tallest living space in the UK. World-renowned architect Ian Simpson designed the 47-storey glass-skinned tower and Carillion, one of the largest contractors in the UK, was the appointed contractor.

August’s expose
In August the EIA publicised that the tower contains the Indonesian hardwood merbau, which had been sourced illegally. The organisation revealed subcontractor Atkinson and Kirby supplied the merbau flooring for all 219 apartments. “The EIA posed as architects and made enquiries to Atkinson and Kirby about getting hold of merbau and asked whether it was that species used in Beetham,” says a spokesman. “They said they were discontinuing it because of all the illegal logging going on and were worried about it themselves.”

At that point the EIA requested proof of legality for the timber used in the Beetham Tower. “We received some documents but none pertaining to the selling of the timber,” says the spokesman. “They said they had Brik certificates, which is a partial check on legality, and said they were relying on them. The furthest point to which the documents traced back was to the point when the timber was moved out of the forest. So where the timber was from, we don’t know.

“To a point Atkinson and Kirby have been very co-operative in providing a certain amount of documentation but they haven’t produced what we were looking for.”

Ray Scott, director of Atkinson and Kirby, says the company does not comment on pervious work, but it believes the certification it received for its merbau, proves it is legal and sustainabe. “We supply flooring to a lot of contractors, some of which may have gone into the Beetham Tower,” he says. “The suppliers that we’ve used are members of the Indonesian Tropical Forest Foundation. We received certificates from the Indonesian Government Forestry Foundation and Brik certificates, so in terms of legality we were confident everything was above board.”

Scott confirms Atkinson and Kirby received no third party consultation from any recognised UK schemes such as the Timber Trade Federation (TTF) or the World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF), only from the Indonesian supplier. “We’ve bought some quantities of merbau flooring over thyears and we’ve believed it to be legal,” he says. “Now the EIA and Greenpeace have come along and presented us with some documentation bringing that into question whereas we don’tnecessarily think it has any form of illegality associated with it.”

Atkinson and Kirby have ceased trading merbau and replaced it with Jatoba, a tropical hardwood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). “The controversy the EIA has earthed up has led us to the decision to pull out of merbau.”

No crime
EIA senior forest campaigner, Faith Doherty, explains that the people to blame in the Beetham Tower case are those who have refused to legislate against the sale of illegal timber. “Of all the natural resources that exist this is the last one to be regulated – even the fishing trade is regulated now,” she says.

The merbau in question grows in Indonesia’s Papua province. Doherty explains that a lot of work has been done in the last nine years across the whole of Indonesia to work towards producing legal and sustainability timber. “Illegal logging in Indonesia is not just about dealing with it in Indonesia,” she says. “It is about dealing with the demand for cheap tropical timber from Europe.”

She explains legislation put in place will prohibit the sale of illegally sourced timber in the UK and help companies who are trying to do the right thing.

“At the moment everything that exists in terms of the supply of legal or sustainable timber is of a voluntary nature,” she says. “So you can have a voluntary code of conduct, a voluntary agreement on a responsible purchasing policy but there is nothing there to force you to do it.”

Breakdown in communication
Caught up in the illegal logging drama is Carillion, the main contractor for the Beetham Tower.

The company was the first contractor to join the WWF’s Forest and Trade Network in 1999 and works closely with the organisation to ensure that its procurement policy is sound. This includes submitting detailed action plans to improve its sustainability procedures and having third party audits on the amount of FSCcertified timber it uses for its projects.

IMS director of Carillion National Building, Barry Quatermass says: “We had evidence to show that the site procurement team had actively sought certification concerning the legality of timber.”

Quatermass explains Carillion had written assurances in the form of references from each link in the supply chain. “At that point the site teams felt they had fulfilled everything that was required of them and they had got certification confirming legality and therefore proceeded,” he says. “We suspect that the certification was not valid.”

How could Carillion have prevented the illegal hardwood entering the project? “It’s very hard to know,” Quatermass says. “We asked the people that we were meant to and we got the responses we were looking for. An awful lot of the information we got was in a foreign language. It’s not like we could walk across the office and get it translated, so there was a degree of trust involved.”

The merbau was procured nearly three years ago and since then Carillion has consolidated its supply chain, working with fewer suppliers on a more regular and trusted basis.

“We also have a service with the WWF to get them to help us when we have a timber speices we need to source,” says Quatermass. “So we’ve got that service now to move things on.”

Quatermass says that there is a number of construction companies out there who don’t care where they source their timber from, but he adds Carillion is not one of these. “I’m in no doubt that the Beetham Organisation is upset with the construction industry,” he says. “They’re going about their business and then they’re getting phone calls from the EIA and we all get tarnished with that same brush.”

He says Carillion was able to go to the Beetham Organisation and demonstrate everything they had done to reasonably guarantee the timber was legal and sustainable. “It’s far more than any other contractor working for them would have done,” he adds.

A spokeswoman from the Beetham Organisation said, “We employed Carillion at 301 Deansgate, Manchester. When wood was procured for the project we received certificates of legality for the timber from its supplier.”

A legalised future
“To be honest, they’ve made an effort to supply the right paperwork,” says one independent source. “The Brik certificate provides a necessary, if partial check on the legality of logs. However to meet the UK market’s growing demand for verified legal timber it needs to assess other aspects of legality and introduce field inspections of mills and forests.”

The source says the certificates Carillion received show evidence of trade and export documents, but shows no evidence of where the timber is from and of the ownership of the forest: “This is what is missing.”

Liz Betser, environment and forest policy manager at the TTF recognises the difficulty for UK companies in identifying the correct paperwork, especially from Indonesia. “Half the problem is that it is really difficult to know what you should be receiving,” she says.

Next month the TTF will meet with the Rainforest Alliance and Proforest at Chatham House in London to discuss the development of statutory guidelines in Indonesia regarding the specific documentation members should look for. “At the moment it’s difficult,” says Betser. “This isn’t an excuse it’s just that even if you are trying to do it with the best of intentions, it’s not always easy to get it right.”

The TTF recommend that as there is currently no certified merbau that can be sourced from Indonesia the best solution for importers is to be signed up to the Timber Trade Action Plan or the WWF’s Global Forest and Trade Network.