U.S. consumers risk using flooring products made of wood illegally logged from Cambodia’s rainforests, a recent Mongabay investigation suggests.
The investigation focused on companies in Cambodia’s Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone (SEZ) that manufacture furniture and engineered wood flooring for the U.S. market. One company in particular, Chinese-owned Nature Flooring (Cambodia), sources its plywood cores from Angkor Plywood, our team found. Angkor Plywood is a Cambodian company that’s been accused of illegally logging timber from protected areas like Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary.
“We buy from Angkor Plywood … the company provides eucalyptus and acacia, they have their own plantation in Kandal province,” Jin Tian Liao, a translator for Nature Flooring’s management, told Mongabay. He admitted, however, that the company staff had never visited the plantation. “They grow it, we buy it, we produce flooring and sell that to the U.S.,” he said.
Past investigations have found that Angkor Plywood, co-owned by former logger Chea Pov and Taiwanese national Lu Chu Chang, doesn’t have a plantation in Kandal, only a factory.
Chang also heads Think Biotech, a company later rebranded to Holy Plantation, that, on paper, has a timber plantation in Kratie province on the border of Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary. While Jin indicated Nature Flooring was buying acacia and eucalyptus from this plantation, Holy Plantation has been accused of relying heavily on wood illegally logged from inside Prey Lang rather than timber that’s plantation-grown.
“They [Nature Flooring] themselves don’t know what it is that they’re selling,” a timber industry insider told Mongabay, adding that minimal testing is done to check the species or origin of the wood. “If the customers in the U.S. who actually want a green home … realize they’re actually walking on a jungle that they helped to cut down, people will get upset.”
Nature Flooring has had recurring issues with tracing the origin of the wood it purchases. In 2017, the company had to stop importing wood from Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands after being accused of purchasing illegally harvested wood.
At the same time, Nature Flooring’s parent company, Nature Home, claims to be a “green” company on its website.
Mongabay’s investigation suggests that Nature Flooring sells the plywood it sources from Angkor Plywood to factories like Fine Flooring, a subsidiary of Pennsylvania-based AHF Products, which claims to be the largest U.S. wood flooring manufacturer. When contacted, AHF told Mongabay in an emailed response that it “does not use any illegally harvested wood products.”
“We have a rigorous supplier vetting and compliance program to verify all wood products are legally sourced. Any inferences to the contrary are simply not true,” AHF said.
This is a summary of “Cambodian logging syndicate tied to major U.S. wood flooring supply chains” by Gerald Flynn.
Banner image of logging truck near Think Biotech’s concession in 2020. Image by Ma Chettra.