Chinese Furniture Export Industry Will Face New Rules
2011-07-25

 Furniture industry may become the second industry that suffers a setback in EU market after traditional Chinese medicine. Country of origin labels method of EU, which will take effect on March 3, 2013, has been affecting Chinese furniture export enterprises.

People familiar with the matter said that Country of origin labels method, which aims to insure buyers know country of origin, is similar to the United States Lacey Act enacted last year.  It requests the wood exported to EU market must get FSC certificate to prove that wood purchased by manufacturing enterprises produce in legal developed forest.

Known from the reporter some Chinese enterprises import logs and wood from Russia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea and so on. Most of those countries have the problem of illegal logging, so the request of FSC certificate may let some furniture enterprises miss the opportunity.

 Some insiders managing furniture export industry said that the number of furniture exported to EU represents more than 1/3 of Chinese global furniture export volume. This new rule makes about 30% furniture export enterprises hard to access to European market. In other words, the furniture made by no FSC certificate wood will can’t export to EU.

According to presentations medium-sized and small enterprises will suffer relatively serious effect, because they use illegal logs a lot. An enterprise principal said:” We can but give up EU market and resell it to East Asia and elsewhere.” He also told the reporter that as medium-sized and small enterprises, they just can attract clients by low prices. If they purchase FSC logs in America and Europe, they will lose competitive edge and hard to keep a foothold in market.

This principal said:” Enterprises can not afford checking fare even though they purchase FSC logs in America and Europe, to say the least. Authentication fare need 30,000 to 50,000 for one time and they need to be authenticated every year after that. ”