Furniture exporters having difficulty meeting European certification standards

Only ten furniture exporters can meet the standards of the European Union's forestry certification system, the Chamber of Furniture Industries of the Philippines has said.   "We are not ready for its implementation. We will be losing huge revenues once it is strictly implemented; its impact on our revenues will be around 10 to 15 percent," CFIP executive director Salvio Valenzuela said over the weekend.   The group’s president, Nicolaas K. de Lange, added that going through the certification process is expensive.   "....The industry is trying to look for other options so that companies already exporting to Europe or still planning to will not have the doors to the European market closed on them completely in March 2013," de Lange said.   He added the CFIP plea to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources for the issuance of a certification that the wood they use to build furniture come from plantations and not natural growth forests.   “(O)nly plantation forests are actively being harvested at the moment. In this light, the possibility of our wood coming from illegal sources is practically nil," he said. — ELR, GMA News