How do I document the origin of the wood?

What you concretely have to do

What is expected of you

Collect and transfer source data in the supply chain

Article 38 of the ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) describes that actors in the supply chain provide the data necessary to compile a product passport. For furniture with wooden components, this means that data on the origin of the wood — where it comes from, through which stages it is processed — is recorded somewhere in the chain and passed on to the party compiling the passport. For a furniture company with 10 to 100 employees, this usually comes down to requesting this data from their own wood supplier or sheet material producer, and forwarding it to the party drawing up the passport. In practical terms, the first question is therefore not "how do I register this myself", but "where do I get this information from, and in what form". An overview of which data you must request from your furniture supplier provides a starting point for what can be concretely requested.

Include origin information in the product passport

Article 10 of the ESPR describes what type of information goes into a digital product passport: data relevant to the sustainability and origin of the product and its components. For a wooden piece of furniture, the origin of the wood falls under that category of information, alongside other characteristics such as material composition. What this concretely means for a company depends on the delegated act that is specifically drawn up for furniture — it ultimately determines what level of detail is required (for example: country of origin, forest management certificate, or intermediate processors). As long as that act has not been published, it is advisable to collect origin data in as much detail as possible, so that a company does not have to reconstruct afterwards what was purchased five years earlier.

Keep data current and traceable

Origin information is not a snapshot. A supplier can change forest manager, wood species, or country of purchase, without the product name or article number changing. For a product passport that is hosted for ten years, it is important that origin data remain linked to the correct production batch or period, not only to the article number. In practical terms, this means that a company not only asks "what is the origin of this wood", but also records when that information was provided and for which delivery it applies.

Where things go wrong in practice

A first situation that often occurs: a furniture maker purchases sheet material from a wholesaler, who themselves purchases from various sawmills. The wholesaler only provides "Europe" or "certified wood" as an answer, without underlying documentation. That is too vague for a passport that requires traceable origin.

A second situation: the same component — for example, a solid oak base frame — is purchased from two suppliers, depending on availability and price. Without a system that records per delivery which supplier and which origin the wood comes from, a passport is created that is factually incorrect as soon as both wood flows have been used together. An approach to this is described on the page on what to do if the same component is purchased from different suppliers.

A third situation arises with subcontractors who supply semi-finished products, such as pre-cut frames or steamed components. That subcontractor is often not seen as a "supplier" in the administration, while the wood he processes does end up in the final product. Questions about whether such parties also need to provide data are addressed on the page on subcontractors supplying semi-finished products.

A fourth situation: a company imports furniture or components from outside the EU and adopts the statement of the foreign factory without further review. When importing from outside the EU, there are points of attention that do not apply when purchasing within the EU, including because control and traceability of origin claims are more difficult to organize from a distance. This is further elaborated on the page on what the product passport means when importing furniture from outside the EU.

A fifth situation is that a company receives the origin data but never checks whether they are internally consistent — for example a certificate number that does not match the stated wood species. This remains unnoticed until a passport has already been published.

What you can put in order now

• Origin declaration per delivery: a document in which the supplier indicates for each shipment or batch where the wood comes from, not merely as a general company statement but linked to a specific delivery.
• Certificates of forest management or chain certification: copies or references to valid certificates (for example FSC- or PEFC-type systems), including validity date, so that expired certificates do not go unnoticed.
• Purchase contract with a provision on data supply: an agreement that the supplier provides origin data with each delivery, and not only on request. How such a provision is to be included is described on the page on recording the supply of passport data in the purchase contract.
• Internal linking between batch and origin: a simple overview (spreadsheet or part of the ERP system) in which for each production batch the wood origin used is recorded, so that this does not have to be reconstructed later.
• Check point upon receipt of data: a fixed procedure to verify whether the received origin information is complete and internally consistent, before it is passed on to the passport. An approach to this is described on the page on checking a supplier's data for accuracy.
• Action item for missing data: a fixed procedure for what happens if a supplier does not provide or provides insufficient origin information, including a timeline for follow-up. See for this the page on what to do if a supplier does not provide the data.

These records are not an end in themselves, but build up the file with which a product passport can subsequently be compiled and substantiated — even if the delegated act for furniture at a later time sets specific requirements for origin information.