Traceability is one of industry’s most important strategic means to combat illegal logging and to avoid using unacceptable sources of wood.

ACE UK members, Tetra Pak, Elopak and SIG Combibloc, and their paperboard suppliers, BillerudKorsnas and Stora Enso, have put rigorous traceability systems in place so that they can trace their wood back to the forest area it came from.

These systems are independently verified and certified annually according to ‘Chain of Custody’ (CoC) standards set by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and/or Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), which set out basic requirements to demonstrate the sources are:

• controlled and do not include wood harvested illegally or in violation of civil rights
• not in forests in which high conservation values are threatened
• not from forests that are being converted to non-forest uses
• not from areas where genetically-modified trees are planted
  

100% of the paperboard produced in Europe for beverage cartons already comes from independently certified chain of custody mills. In addition, in 2007, ACE UK members initiated a global voluntary sector commitment on wood traceability to have 100% chain of custody certification (confirmed as 88% in October 2013):

• by 2015 for all paperboard purchased worldwide for the manufacture of beverage cartons
• by 2018 for all their own packaging material manufacturing plants worldwide
  

The commitment is subject to an annual review by ProForest, an independent verifier of forest supply chain practices. The latest review can be found below.