Up to 7.5 percent of all timber used in UK housing could be be illegally souced from Russia, with huge volumes of birch destined for furniture, kitchen panels and structural framing infiltrating supply chains under false pretences, a new forensic investigation has found. It comes as Australian‐based Source Certain traced hundreds of consignments labelled as Estonian, Latvian or Lithuanian back to forests within Russia—despite a blanket ban on Russian imports imposed in 2022—by combining logistics data with wood-DNA analysis.
“This intrinsic ‘bar code’ is a direct reflection of where the timber has grown,” explains Source Certain founder Cameron Scadding. Surveying more than 3,000 samples from British construction projects, his team discovered that over 10 percent were misrepresented either in origin or species—and that three-quarters of the mislabelled stock originated in Russia.
Industry figures warn that this illegal trade not only breaches sanctions but also distorts competition by enabling unscrupulous suppliers to undercut firms that pay premiums for certified, responsibly sourced wood. “Compliant companies invest heavily in due diligence only to have their margins eroded by illegal operators,” says one senior timber importer. “The integrity of our entire housing supply chain is at risk if we cannot guarantee the provenance of our materials.”
In response, Think Timber—a UK packaging and distribution firm—has introduced a QR-coded system to enforce traceability from forest to building site. Each pack now carries a unique code which, when scanned, reveals its full chain of custody and country of origin. “Traceability should not be a luxury but the industry standard,” says Gavin Brown, Think Timber’s chief executive. “If illegal timber can be smuggled into our country and used to build homes without our knowledge, how can we credibly pledge to construct 1.5 million homes responsibly?”
Brown is calling for tighter regulation, stronger enforcement and mandatory product-specification requirements in housing guidelines, warning that without clear legal obligations, responsible suppliers will continue to be undercut and sanctioned timber will flow unchallenged into new developments.
The new findings come after Wood Central revealed in April, thay nearly half of birch products certified under third party schemes were mislabelled, with chemical fingerprinting by World Forest ID showed that 46 percent of panels marked as Polish, Latvian, Ukrainian or Estonian most likely came from Russia or Belarus—fueling concerns that large-scale sanction-busting remains unaddressed.
“Where else could it be from?” asks David Hopkins, chief executive of Timber Development UK, noting that lawful supplies of birch plywood are limited to a handful of Finnish sawmills and small operations in the Baltics and Scandinavia. “The bulk must come from Russia, financing its economy in breach of sanctions.”
- To learn more about the shadow trade in Russian timber, and how Russian traders are using “friendly actors” to circumventing sanctions, click here for Wood Central’s special feature.
