– Europe’s largest private forest owner is logging Old-Growth Forest in Sweden

2008 was the year when SCA, after many years of criticism from the NGOs in Sweden, was close to loose its FSC-certificate. The company received in the last revision (2007-11-02) a major CAR, the most serious Corrective Action Request a company can get before the FSC-certificate is suspended. The reason for this was SCA’s logging of High Conservation Value Forests and serious lack of consideration for biological values in the clear-cut landscape.

The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation has with a great interest been following SCA’s attempts to improve the sustainability of their forestry. Members of the SSNC has also made field inventories in forests that have been logged or notified for logging. There is proof in the inventories that has been made in the counties of Västernorrland, Västerbotten and Norrbotten that the company still can’t reach the demands that the certifier made in its report of 2007.

With 2.6 million hectares, SCA is Europe’s largest private forest owner. SCA sells personal care products, tissue, packaging, publication papers and solid-wood products in more than 90 countries. SCA has 52,000 employees in some 60 countries and annual sales in 2008 amounted to EUR 11.5bn (11.4). The biggest owner is Industrivärden which is controlled by Lundberföretagen which is controlled by Fredrik Lundberg who has a 67% stake in the company.

List of SCA-brands

(This is a rewrite from the SSNC-report ”Breakdown for the nature conservation in the forest (of Sweden)”)

A gallery of recent High Conservation Value Forests that have been logged by SCA (subtitles in swedish):