Jakarta, Indonesia, April 19, 2006--According to a report by Dow Jones, Tarkett AG denied recent allegations by environmental groups that the firm sells illegally-sourced merbau hardwood from Papua province, Indonesia.
According to the news story, the company told Dow Jones Newswires in an emailed statement that it goes to "extraordinary lengths" to make sure its merbau comes from proper sources.
"Tarkett is entirely aware of the potential abuse that could be made by other people of the unusual merbau wood," the story quotes the company saying.
Tarkett would not, however, tell the Dow Jones reporters where its merbau comes from, or respond further to such inquiries for today's story.
The controversy was sparked last month by a report by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and the Telapak environmental group in Indonesia, accusing Tarkett and Canada's Goodfellow Inc., of having insufficient documentaion for their merbau supplies.
Goodfellow also declined to answer reporters' questions about the allegation, the Dow Jones story said.
The environmental groups' report, entitled, "Behind the Veneer: How Indonesia's Last Rainforests are being Felled for Flooring is quoted as saying: "These global flooring companies do not know the precise origin of all the merbau they are selling, that much of the wood originates in Papua and there is no way of being certain it wasn't illegally sourced."
The Dow Jones article also quotes researcher Krystof Obidzinski of Indonesia's Center for International Forestry Research as saying illegal logging is widespread in Papua, especially now that merbau fetches upwards of $750 a cubic meter in China.
The Ministry of Forestry in Indonesia says, according to the news story, that illegal logging takes 2.8 million hectares of forest each year, and has cost the government some $3.7 billion.
The EIA-Telapak report alleges also that Tarkett deliberately misleads the public about its merbau. Tarkett did not provide verification of the legality of its merbau wood products, the report added.
Tarkett is reported to have pointed to its comparatively modest (under 2% of all its woods) purchases of merbau as proof of the firm's environmental committment.
