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Europe’s largest flooring companies are continuing to trade in merbau wood flooring of uncertain origin, despite evidence that the wood is likely to have been stolen from Indonesia’s last remaining rainforests. Environmental groups are now calling for consumers to boycott their merbau products.

Merbau logs stacked up at PT Seng Fong, Surabaya, Indonesia, August 2005. Copyright Sam Lawson/EIA.

Four months ago the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Indonesian partner Telapak released dramatic evidence showing how much of the merbau timber sold as flooring by five giant European and North American flooring manufacturers had originated in Indonesia’s chaotic Papua province, where illegal logging is rampant. Though many large retailers in the UK and US responded quickly by removing the products from sale, the European manufacturers, Junckers, Tarkett, and Kahrs, refused to follow suit.

“While we applaud the swift response of the large retail chains, we are appalled by the failure of the major flooring brands to take similar decisive action,” said Sam Lawson, EIA Senior Forest Campaigner. “These companies are clearly more concerned with supplying the demands of consumers for cheap and fashionable flooring than they are with keeping their hands free of contraband wood”.

Indonesia’s Papua province is home to one of the last significant tracts of virgin tropical forest in Asia. The area has suffered an epidemic of systematic commercial illegal logging in recent years, with merbau trees the main species targeted. In early 2005, EIA/Telapak revealed how merbau trees worth more than a billion US dollars were being smuggled out of Papua every year, mainly for use in wood flooring. Subsequent investigations revealed how most of the merbau flooring on sale in the largest home improvement retailers in Europe and the US had originated in Papua and was of dubious origin.

Of the three major European brands, Sweden’s Kahrs and Germany’s Tarkett have refused to respond to EIA/Telapak’s findings with any evidence to prove the legal source of their merbau. Denmark’s Junkers has made considerable effort to investigate EIA/Telapak’s findings but continues to use Indonesian merbau from the same supplier despite confirming that it originates in Papua and is of unknown source. None of the companies has been willing to pay for the independent audits which could ensure they are not buying stolen wood.

While some large retail chains have stopped selling merbau flooring from these companies, the many smaller chains, independent stores and internet outlets - which collectively represent the bulk of sales – have yet to do so. As a result, merbau flooring which may be made from the stolen trees of Indonesia’s last pristine rainforests remains on sale across Europe and North America.

“If sales of stolen timber in places like Europe are not halted, Papua’s forests will meet the same fate as those elsewhere in Indonesia,” said Arbi Valentinus, Telapak Vice President. “Widespread deforestation will bring devastating floods and death and deprivation for poor forest dependent people.”

EIA and Telapak are calling on consumers to stop buying flooring from the brand name companies until they have cleaned up their act. They are also calling for new laws in Europe to ban import and sale of stolen timber and wood products.

• Over 70 per cent of Indonesia’s original frontier forests have already been lost, and each year an area the size of Belgium is destroyed. Eighty per cent of logging in Indonesia is illegal.

• Recent studies indicate that the EU imported at least €3 billion of illegal timber and wood products in 2004, with Indonesia the largest source (€0.9 billion).

• Headquartered in Germany, Tarkett are the second largest wood flooring company in the world and the largest in Europe, with global sales of $329 million in 2004. Swedish company Kahrs are the third largest wood flooring company in the world, with global sales worth $256 million in 2004. Danish company Junckers are the fourth largest wood flooring company in the world and the largest distributor of solid merbau flooring.

• The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) is the world’s leading organisation dedicated to investigating and exposing environmental crime. More information at www.eia-international.org

• Telapak is an independent, environmental non-profit group based in Bogor, Indonesia. More information at www.telapak.org

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