"For forest owners, joining UPM's PEFC certification group is easy, safe, cost-efficient and risk-free," says Eija Kuusisto, Manager, Key Customer Relations at UPM. "The administrative procedures related to the certification are managed by UPM on behalf of the forest owners. Members of the certification group will be informed of changes regarding the certification, and they can rest assured that forestry practices and harvesting are done according to PEFC requirements.

"The requirements of our end product customers concerning the source of the wood, are continuously becoming more demanding. Therefore, it is important for us to be able to provide our customers with products made from certified wood," says Pekka Rajala, Director Stakeholder Relations, North Europe Forest Issues at UPM. "We aim to increase the use of certified wood in our end products and to promote and use all reliable forest certification schemes."

The forest certification and chain-of-custody management system combined prove that wood used in products comes from sustainably managed forests. The adherence to this chain can be proven all the way down to customers who buy the end products.

"By applying our own PEFC certification group we aim to emphasize the importance of forest certification and to increase the appreciation and use of PEFC through our own actions", Pekka Rajala continues. "It is important that PEFC certification is an essential part of Finnish forestry also in the future.

"The PEFC certification scheme has been widely used in Finland for more than 15 years, and almost 95% of our current managed forests are PEFC certified. UPM has been involved in the PEFC scheme from the beginning and is familiar with its requirements. Therefore, the threshold for implementing UPM's own group certification is low," says Kuusisto.

UPM monitors the origin of all wood it acquires. The amount of certified fibre used in UPM's products was 80% globally in 2013, whereas in Finnish mills the figure was 83%.

All of UPM's forests are certified. In Finland, all of them are PEFC certified and approximately half of them FSC® certified (FSC® C109750). In Minnesota, USA, all the forests are SFI certified, and in the United Kingdom and Uruguay the forests are both FSC and PEFC certified.

For further information, please contact: Pekka Rajala, Director Stakeholder Relations, North Europe Forest Issues, tel. +358 400 269 533, Eija Kuusisto, Manager, Key Customer Relations, tel. +358 400 156 284, or Sami Oksa, Environmental Manager Wood Sourcing and Forestry, tel. +358 040 560 3474.