group certification

Group certification allows a group of forest owners to obtain and maintain a joint forest management certificate. Group certification has been developed in order to provide improved access to certification for small and medium-size forest operations. By sharing the costs related to the certification among several group members, the cost per hectare may be significantly reduced.

Both the FSC and PEFC systems include this option. If you are interested in group certification, please contact us for further assistance or fill in an application form.

If your operation is small or managed extensively, it may also be eligble for certification according to the FSC SLIMF procedures . The SLIMF rules allow a more simple certification process, further reducing the costs of certification. The SLIMF rules may be applied in group certification, if all forests in the group comply with the SLIMF criteria.

Toolkits for FSC group certification

NEPCon has developed FSC group certification toolkits covering the Baltic states and Denmark. The toolkits provide simple and user-friendly step-by-step guidance for forest owners that would like to join a group or to act as group managers. The toolkit for the Baltic states was developed as part of a project on certification supported by IKEA, while the toolkit for Denmark was prepared on request by FSC-Denmark.