Consultation on Australia and New Zealand’s Sustainable Forest Management standard closes tomorrow, with public comment on Amendment One to AS/NZS 4708 the last window for growers, millers, and exporters to shape rules that will stand for five years. That is according to Simon Dorries, the chief executive of Responsible Wood, who has urged submissions from across the supply chain before the draft returns to the committee.
“We encourage you to review the proposed amendments and provide feedback,” Dorries said, opening the call beyond the sector to builders, designers, retailers, and the people who buy certified timber.
The European Commission set the deadline these submissions answer to, with the EU Deforestation Regulation reaching timber’s micro and small operators on 30 December 2026, a full year before the smallest firms in any other sector. PEFC rewrote its global benchmark in 2024 to hold that market open, and Amendment One carries that rewrite into Australian and New Zealand certification, the reason the draft exists in the first place.
“We have completed the simplification review and put in place the necessary measures,” Jessika Roswall, European Commissioner for Environment, said on adopting a 13 July package that cut expected compliance costs by 75 per cent. The core duties survive that cut, with operators still mapping the plot each log came from, checking it is legal, and filing a statement before the wood is sold.
AS/NZS 4708 sets the tests forest managers must meet to certify their forests as sustainable, anchoring the Responsible Wood scheme in Australia and forming the basis of New Zealand’s PEFC-recognised scheme. Reviewed every five years and last updated in 2021, the document binds growers selling into Europe and growers who never ship logs offshore, because the scheme applies a single rule set to every forest in it.
Preparing the draft has drawn in far more than the sector, with the Standards Reference Committee seating forest managers, researchers, auditors, government, green groups, Indigenous stakeholders, industry, and unions from both countries. The review runs under Standards Australia rules, and Responsible Wood holds Standards Development Organisation status in both markets, which lets it write the Standard rather than just comment on it.
It comes as Australia’s trade agreement with Brussels, concluded in March, left beef and timber exporters fully exposed to the regulation, with no carve-out for certified products. Certification is the practical route left, and the window closing tomorrow decides how well it works for the growers who have to use it.
Submissions on the public comment sheet close tomorrow, after which the committee will settle the revision under PEFC, the world’s largest forest certification system. No further public window opens before the next review, which means the text signed off this month is the text the sector has to work to.
Every submission filed before the deadline reaches a committee that will not reopen the document for another five years, and on Responsible Wood’s count the rules it settles will govern just under 17 million hectares of certified Australian forest and 600,000 more across the Tasman.
