RISKY BUSINESS

EU timber imports linked to the destruction of Borneo's forests

Key Findings

Risky Business was published on 21^st October 2025

• With some of Indonesia’s last remaining orangutan strongholds being flattened at an alarming rate, our investigators have, for the first time, traced the timber companies buying the wood produced through this deforestation – and their biggest European clients
• Thousands of unpublished documents, obtained by Earthsight and our Indonesian partner Auriga Nusantara, allowed us to piece together a near-comprehensive snapshot of the companies using wood from bulldozed forests in Borneo, the epicentre of Indonesian deforestation. New footage captures the destroyed habitat of multiple endangered species, while members of local and Indigenous communities speak of harm to their livelihoods
• Combined with analysis of trade data, the documents reveal that the biggest Indonesian buyers of logs produced through this clearance of natural forest – rather than logging that leaves the rest of the forest standing – are all shipping wood products to Europe
• The main European customers of Indonesian firms handling deforestation wood are Dutch, Belgian and German companies, which ordered more than 23,000 cubic metres of wood products in 2024, including finished plywood, garden decking and door frames
• There is a high risk that any timber imported from these Indonesian companies comes from forest clearance. We found evidence that proves deforestation wood has entered European markets, while our undercover investigation exposes a pattern of dishonesty and false claims, meaning timber exporters’ promises of sustainable supplies cannot be trusted
• Our findings highlight the urgent need for the EU Deforestation Regulation, which when implemented should ban imports of deforestation wood. But the regulation is under persistent attack from some policymakers and industry groups
• EU importers of Indonesian wood products should cease buying from any company that handles logs from forest clearance, and switch to some of the many Indonesian firms that are not using this shameful timber

This report is a collaboration between Earthsight and our Indonesian partner organisation, Auriga Nusantara

Deforestation timber has long been big business in Indonesia.

When deforestation in the country was at its height in the 2010s, as much as 85 per cent of all the natural forest logs being harvested were estimated to have come from the clearance of forest for agriculture and timber plantations.⁵  

Though the proportion has since declined, the volumes involved remain large. According to figures published by Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry, 514,762m³ of timber derived from land clearing or land preparation in timber plantation, mining and agricultural concessions were used by the country’s timber industry in 2024.⁶ Seventy-nine per cent of all wood from clearance in timber plantation concessions was processed by mills in Borneo.^7,8 

We identified 65 Indonesian companies which in their 2024 RPBBI documents reported purchasing logs derived from land clearing or land preparation in timber plantations, or wood from oil palm or mining concessions.⁹ These ranged from a few logs to 100 per cent of their timber supply. (See Appendix I for the full list of these companies.)¹⁰ 

We then analysed satellite imagery of the concessions named as sources of this timber. In some cases, we identified only selective logging activity – possibly involving the cutting of the largest or most valuable trees ahead of full clearance. We excluded these concessions for the purpose of this report, restricting our focus to those where large-scale deforestation could be confirmed, and the timber companies which bought wood from these concessions.  

We followed this with field verification, to document recently deforested areas initially detected through analysis of satellite imagery. The field team interviewed members of local communities whose land adjoins or in some cases overlaps with the concession, to understand the impacts of the companies’ activities. 

We then analysed shipment records to pinpoint which of the companies identified in the first phase of research exported hardwood products to the EU in 2024, checking these records against an Indonesian government export database to verify the trade flows were genuine. We were thus able to narrow our focus to five Indonesian timber companies which in 2024 both purchased large quantities of deforestation wood from concessions where confirmed forest clearance had taken place, and which had that same year exported hardwood products to the EU.¹¹ (See Appendix II for full details of these companies’ wood supplies and exports.)

These companies are far from insignificant players in Indonesia’s timber industry. They include four of the top five users of logs derived from forest clearance or land preparation across all Indonesia’s timber processing companies in 2024, according to our analysis.¹² The fifth, PT Kayu Lapis Asli Murni, which bought 17,853m³ of deforestation wood in 2024, supplies plywood to the US recreational vehicle (RV) industry, as covered in our August 2025 report Unhappy Campers,¹³ which was featured on the front page of The New York Times.¹⁴ PT Kayu Lapis Asli Murni also exported plywood to Italy in 2025.¹⁵  

Put another way, 43 per cent of all wood from forest clearance or land preparation in plantation concessions consumed by Indonesian timber mills in 2024 was used by just five companies, all of which sell their products to Western markets.¹⁶ 

Undercover investigators from Earthsight and Auriga, posing as potential buyers, visited the factories of two of these Indonesian timber companies, PT Kayu Multiguna Indonesia and PT Putra Buana Indonesia Wood Industry, seeking to obtain more information about their operations, and see what their salespeople may claim about their sources of timber.  

We also visited timber merchants, building supply retailers and garden centres across Belgium and the Netherlands, looking for wood products made using timber from these Indonesian companies, and recording how these products are marketed. 

The EU-based customers of the five Indonesian companies named above include Europe’s biggest players in tropical wood. Among them are the largest recipient of Indonesian plywood shipped to the EU in 2024, Belgium-based Fepco International, and the second-largest, Germany’s Impan GmbH. Together, these two companies accounted for a third of all plywood shipped from Indonesia to the EU in 2024.¹⁷  

All five Indonesian companies named above also purchased wood from selective logging concessions, which does not involve the total clearance of forest. In theory, therefore, it is possible that this less damaging wood was used for their European exports, and that the deforestation wood they bought was diverted to other markets. However, we were able to identify recent cases of deforestation wood from Borneo entering EU supply chains, confirmed by European importing companies themselves. 

In an emailed response to our findings, Dutch timber company Dekker Hout named the Indonesian concession PT Mayawana Persada among their recent sources of Indonesian timber. PT Mayawana Persada has cleared more than 33,000ha of natural forest in its concession since 2021, more than any other industrial plantation concession in Indonesia, and any natural forest timber from there is certain to have come from deforestation.¹⁸ Extensive clearance of natural forest by PT Mayawana Persada has been well publicised in international media, which a simple Google search would have revealed.¹⁹

Another Dutch company, the plywood importer and wholesaler International Plywood BV, sent us a list of coordinates provided by its Indonesian supplier PT Kayu Multiguna Indonesia, showing where the timber they were buying in February 2025 had been harvested. These coordinates link to a recently deforested area within an oil palm concession, PT Bina Sarana Sawit Utama, proving that the company imported deforestation wood. 

These are unlikely to be the only examples. In most cases, a lack of publicly accessible data means it is impossible for independent NGOs to pinpoint where wood in a given shipment came from, and so quantify exactly how much deforestation wood is entering the EU. But our investigation exposes Indonesian companies misleading their customers about the true nature of their wood supply, meaning promises that their timber comes from sustainable sources cannot be trusted (see below). As such, there is a high risk that any shipments from companies handling deforestation timber may be tainted with such wood. 

Hardwood products imported into the EU from the five Indonesian companies named above include garden decking, door frames and plywood. Shipment records reveal Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany to be the main EU destinations of imports (see Appendix II for details of all relevant supply chains). 

The Belgian company Seiton BV makes a plywood product branded as ‘Solid John’, using wood from a tree called meranti, which grows only in natural forests in Southeast Asia. Seiton sourced all of its Indonesian meranti in 2024 from PT Basirih Industrial, which that year used almost 6300m³ of logs from concessions where we confirmed large-scale deforestation taking place (see chart below). Solid John can be found prominently marketed in building supply retailers across Belgium, including Apok, Defrancq and VC Wood, advertised for use in roofing and external cladding.

One customer of Indonesian timber company PT Putra Buana Indonesia Wood Industry is German firm Kurz KG, which in 2024 bought decking made from kapur, a hardwood tree that grows in Southeast Asian rainforests. Kurz KG sells garden wood under the Tiger Premium brand, including kapur decking. 

EU-based buyers from PT Kayu Multiguna Indonesia included Dutch company Dekker Hout, which sells wood and composite products across Europe. In 2024, Dekker Hout imported door jambs made from rainforest tree species nyatoh, bintangur and gerunggang.  

Meanwhile, the Belgian company Fepco International imported hardwood plywood made from meranti and other species from three of the companies named above: PT Kayu Multiguna Indonesia, PT Korindo Ariabima Sari and PT Basirih Industrial. The German company Impan GmbH is named in shipment records as the buyer of meranti plywood sent from PT Basirih Industrial to Belgium, Sweden, Netherlands and France, as well as shipments of hardwood plywood from PT Wijaya Triutama Plywood Industri to Germany and Italy. Meranti plywood is used in construction of roofs, walls, flooring and doors, among other applications. 

For EU companies, importing timber that is derived from deforestation should become illegal when a new law, the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), comes into effect. But the EUDR is under attack from some policymakers and industry groups, who are pushing for repeated delays, loopholes and exemptions that would leave the law unfit for purpose.  

This report demonstrates why the EUDR is urgently needed in Europe’s timber sector: to ensure buyers can be confident in where their wood came from; to stop the flow of deforestation wood into Europe; and to end European complicity in the destruction of tropical forests. 

Our research highlights why a sole focus on halting flows of illegal timber is not sufficient to stop European demand driving deforestation overseas: legally harvested but highly unsustainable timber must also be addressed. 

It also serves as an urgent call to action for any company importing timber products from Indonesia to the EU: these firms must carefully examine their supply chains and eliminate risk that their imports may be tainted by deforestation wood. Our findings underline these EU companies should not do business with any supplier handling deforestation wood, and should ensure their suppliers use only timber selectively logged from sustainably-managed forests or obtained from mature timber plantations.

The forest destruction we witnessed is part of a wider, alarming trend. Total deforestation in Indonesia rose in 2024 to more than 261,000ha, an area bigger than Luxembourg, marking the third consecutive year of increase. Borneo was the epicentre of this loss, representing almost half the total. The single biggest driver was clearance of forests for timber plantations, followed by mining and oil palm – together, these drivers accounted for 59 per cent of all deforestation in Indonesian Borneo in 2024.³¹ 

Beyond the impacts on local communities and biodiversity, the loss of Indonesia’s forest comes at an immense cost to our climate. When natural forest is destroyed, vast quantities of carbon are released into the atmosphere, while the future carbon sequestration potential of the forest is lost. According to Global Forest Watch, Indonesia’s natural forest loss in 2024 was equivalent to 194 million tonnes of CO₂,³² more than the entire estimated greenhouse gas emissions of the Netherlands.³³ 

The climate impacts of deforestation are especially severe when forest is cleared on peatland, where the ground is made up of partially decomposed and waterlogged vegetation. Indonesia is home to more peatland than any other tropical country, and its peat is estimated to sequester more than 55 billion tonnes of carbon.³⁴ Among the concessions we visited, the southern part of PT Industrial Forest Plantation is mapped as peatland. Fifteen per cent of forest clearance by the company since 2022 is estimated to have occurred on peat,³⁵ despite clearance on peatland being tightly controlled by Indonesian regulations, and banned in areas of deep peat. The consequences of the forest destruction detailed in this report are therefore truly global in scale.

Adopted in June 2023 and currently set to come into effect on 30 December 2025 for large enterprises and 30 June 2026 for small and medium enterprises, the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) will prohibit the import into the EU of certain commodities – timber (including pulp and paper), palm oil, soy, coffee, cocoa, rubber, beef and leather – unless they are:

In order to produce a valid due diligence statement, any company importing these commodities or products made from them – known as an ‘operator’ in the regulation – must collect certain information about the product, including geolocation data on all plots of land where the commodity was produced. Downstream companies that trade these products after they have been imported into the EU – referred to as a ‘trader’ in the regulation – are also required to ensure they are compliant with EUDR requirements, although these companies can largely rely on information from their suppliers.³⁷ 

The EUDR is a regulation with teeth. A company that violates it could face a range of penalties, including a fine of up to 4 per cent of its annual EU-wide turnover; confiscation of relevant products and associated revenue; and a temporary ban on importing or exporting relevant commodities to or from the EU. The European Commission will also publish a list of final judgments – a ‘name and shame list’ of companies found to have violated the EUDR. 

Although the EUDR stands to be one of the world’s most impactful supply chain laws, it has repeatedly come under threat. In 2024, pressure from right-wing European political parties led to the law’s start date being delayed from 30 December 2024 to 30 December 2025.³⁸ In May 2025, several EU agriculture ministers, responding to industry lobbying, tabled a proposal that would exempt European producers from some of the EUDR’s requirements – a major loophole.³⁹ This proposal was supported by a parliamentary resolution.⁴⁰  

The EU Commission has since announced an intention to reconsider several European environmental laws with the aim of reducing the costs of regulatory compliance for businesses; it remains to be seen whether the EUDR will be included in this process.⁴¹ Most recently, on 23 September 2025, the EU Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall announced her intention to delay the law’s implementation once again, by another year, and hinted that she may also propose amendments to ’simplify’ the law.⁴² 

Our investigation found a pattern of dishonesty and inaccurate claims from Indonesian timber exporters that suggest establishing genuinely negligible risk that a given shipment is linked to deforestation may be very challenging if sourcing from a timber supplier that uses any deforestation wood.  

In November 2024, we visited the factories of PT Kayu Multiguna Indonesia and PT Putra Buana Indonesia Wood Industry, the two companies on our list of five for which the EU represents the greatest proportion of their total exports: 88 per cent and 73 per cent respectively in 2024. RPBBI documents reveal that in 2024, these two companies both purchased thousands of cubic metres of deforestation wood. But on our visit, we recorded representatives at both companies falsely claiming to our investigators, posing as potential buyers, that they do not buy any wood from deforestation.  

In response to a letter outlining our findings, Belgian company Fepco International, one of PT Kayu Multiguna Indonesia’s EU customers and the biggest importer of Indonesian plywood into the EU in 2024,⁴⁸ said the Indonesian company had claimed our visit in November 2024 could not have happened, because of a recent factory fire. In fact, the fire was a point of discussion during our visit, which was documented on film.

In another example of flouted corporate sustainability claims, the website of the NSS Group, an Indonesian stock exchange-listed palm oil producer, states: “we constantly embrace our policies of Zero-deforestation and Zero-exploitations across our plantations and plasma areas.”⁵³ This is entirely contradicted by the extensive deforestation underway in the concession of PT Bina Sarana Sawit Utama, a palm oil company 99.99 per cent owned by the NSS Group which cleared more than 500ha of natural forest in 2024, and supplied more than 1400m³ of natural forest timber to PT Kayu Multiguna Indonesia (PT KMI) that year.

Timber Trade Connection BV is also listed in shipment records from 2024 as the buyer of 1371m³ of wood products made of meranti from PT Kayu Multiguna Indonesia. In an emailed response to our findings, Timber Trade Connection BV stated that the company acts as an agent, rather than the physical importer of Indonesian timber. They did not respond to a follow-up request to share the names of importing companies. 

Responsibility for compliance with the EUDR, and any penalties for its violation, rests squarely with the EU importer. It is therefore of critical importance for any company importing Indonesian timber to look beyond assurances of sustainability from their suppliers, and conduct meaningful due diligence and risk assessment of their own. 

It is clear that these Indonesian timber exporters see a benefit in assuring their buyers that their goods are deforestation-free, and in several cases are willing to misrepresent their actual activities to maintain this image. Given this, it would be prudent for EU importers to purchase only from Indonesian companies that have no deforestation wood in their supply, therefore eliminating the risk of importing timber that is not deforestation-free. 

In some cases, this approach would seemingly align with the importer’s own sustainability policies. For example, in response to our findings, Fepco International referred to their deforestation-free sourcing policy, which “prohibits sourcing from any supplier involved in deforestation or forest conversion, irrespective of illegality.” Arguably, a timber supplier that sources a proportion of its logs from deforestation is very much ‘involved in’ deforestation, and should be excluded on this basis. In response to Earthsight’s question to clarify how they define this, Fepco responded: “In our definition, “involved in” refers to direct responsibility for such activities through ownership or active management of concessions where deforestation is taking place. We note your broader interpretation of the term and will take this into account in our ongoing policy reviews.” 

Fepco International further stated in October 2025 that they are now buying only FSC-certified wood from PT Kayu Multiguna Indonesia and PEFC-certified wood from PT Korindo Ariabima Sari. 

In response to our findings, Dutch importer Dekker Hout wrote: “We do not want to be affiliated with the (possible) use of clearcut timber in Indonesia.” They further stated: “we have immediately suspended all pending contracts related to tropical hardwoods until this matter is fully resolved.”

In order to assess their risk of exposure to deforestation wood, current or potential importers of Indonesian wood products should seek information on all their suppliers’ timber sources. This should not need anything like the extensive research we conducted for this report, given Indonesia’s timber management systems require all timber processing companies to collect extensive data on their sources of logs and semi-processed wood.  

While much of this data is not easily accessible for civil society groups, any current or potential customer in Europe can request it directly from the Indonesian supplier. Physical inspections at supplier mills can also be used to check sources of timber, since SVLK regulations require tags to be placed on all logs, giving the name of the concession where they were harvested.  

Any natural forest timber (as opposed to harvested plantation timber) coming from a timber plantation concession or oil palm plantation should serve as a red flag to the EU importer as very likely coming from deforestation.⁵⁴ The names, categories and boundaries of such concessions are readily available on public resources such as Nusantara Atlas, Global Forest Watch and MapBiomas Indonesia.⁵⁵ 

As well as buying directly from concessions, some Indonesian wood processing companies also buy raw logs or processed wood from other timber companies. These middlemen firms are clearly named in the RPBBI timber sourcing documents we obtained. Current or potential customers of those exporters should also seek information on the timber sources used by these middlemen companies as another potential source of deforestation wood. 

Our investigation bears out this risk to importers. PT Wijaya Triutama Plywood Industri, an Indonesian company which exported hardwood plywood to Germany and Italy in 2024, sourced 3393m³ of natural forest logs from plywood producer PT Basirih Industrial, in addition to logs sourced directly from deforesting concessions. PT Basirih Industrial in turn sourced 6399 m³ from deforestation in the concessions of PT Industrial Forest Plantation and PT Bumi Hijau Prima. 

Switching to a supplier that deals only in deforestation-free wood, from selective logging or mature timber plantations, should not be difficult. Our research shows that there are numerous companies in Indonesia producing plywood, decking, door frames and other hardwood products which do not buy any deforestation timber or wood from middlemen companies. 

Adopting policies that exclude any supplier dealing in deforestation wood would ensure that European timber companies are not providing financial support to firms that are complicit in the destruction of tropical forests. Should this be replicated across all companies importing Indonesian timber, it would bolster the reputation of the European timber industry as a whole and reassure customers that their euros are not helping to fund the destruction of tropical forests.

A visitor browsing the website of an EU company that sells Indonesian hardwood is likely to encounter various claims of sustainable and responsible sourcing, backed up by a suite of certifications and logos. They may therefore assume that all the wood the company deals in comes from sustainable sources, verified by reliable certification schemes. In many cases, they would be wrong. 

Three of the five Indonesian companies profiled in this report that export to the EU hold ‘Chain of Custody’ (CoC) certification from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Four of the companies also hold CoC certification with the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), a weaker standard based on national-level sustainability certification systems. 

But a CoC certification simply confirms that the company has processes in place that can segregate timber from forests certified as sustainable by FSC or PEFC from other timber, and then sell on that wood as certified. It does not guarantee that any of the wood they handle is certified, and indeed in most cases (with the exception of PT Kayu Multiguna Indonesia), the majority of the wood these companies bought in 2024 was from non-certified sources. PT Basirih Industrial, which is FSC CoC-certified, did not source any FSC-certified wood at all in 2024. Nor does CoC certification require a company to ensure all its wood supply is deforestation-free.  

Though only wood genuinely sourced from certified forests can be labelled as such, both FSC and PEFC allow companies to obtain CoC certificates and use the scheme logo in their promotional materials, regardless of whether they are actually handling any certified wood. This major flaw in the certification bodies’ approach has led to timber manufacturers and traders routinely misrepresenting their CoC certification as evidence of sustainability across their operations. 

The website of Indonesian plywood producer PT Kayu Multiguna Indonesia, which in 2024 sourced more than 1600 cubic metres of timber from deforestation in palm oil and industrial timber plantations, states: “As part of our commitment to sustainability, we are proud to announce that our wood products hold the prestigious Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certification.”⁵⁶ The clear implication here is that all the products they offer are FSC-certified, despite this being far from true.⁵⁷

We see the same happening in Europe, with many EU timber companies prominently displaying the FSC and PEFC logos across their websites with no accompanying clarification that only a proportion of their products are certified. For example, the website for the ‘Tiger Premium’ brand of decking, owned by German timber company Kurz KG, states: “As a PEFC and FSC® certified company, we attach great importance to the origin of our materials. We only purchase wood from sustainably managed forests.”⁵⁸ A reader may assume this means all these wood products are PEFC and/or FSC-certified, but a close inspection reveals its decking made of Indonesian bangkirai, a hardwood species that grows in natural forests, is available both FSC-certified and not.  

One of Kurz KG’s Indonesian suppliers, PT Putra Buana Indonesia Wood Industry, bought 3594m³ of deforestation wood from PT Indosubur Sukses Makmur in 2024. In an emailed response to our findings, Kurz KG listed a set of guidelines their suppliers must follow, including compliance with Indonesian regulations and “compliance with the principle of zero deforestation and no involvement in human rights violations.” They stated that PT Putra Buana Indonesia Wood Industry was judged to have fulfilled all these requirements. 

What’s more, weaknesses in certification schemes’ standards and decision-making mean that companies deeply complicit in forest destruction and rights abuses may still succeed in gaining ‘sustainable’ certification. Scandalously, PT Industrial Forest Plantation (PT IFP), the second-worst deforester in recent years across Indonesia’s plantation industry, was granted sustainable forest management certification by PEFC in November 2024. This means timber harvested in PT IFP’s concession area may be sold and marketed as PEFC-certified.

When a wood product is sold as PEFC-certified, this is supposed to indicate the timber was harvested from a certified, sustainably-managed forest, and not on land deforested after 2010. When contacted about this decision, PEFC International told us that only 81,533.75 hectares of PT IFP’s 100,989.4-ha concession was certified in 2024, while the remaining 19,453.65ha were excluded from certification due to natural forest having been cleared there since 2010, including large areas cleared in 2023.  

The scheme therefore appears to offer little incentive for a plantation company to preserve natural forest in its concession. By failing to apply the 2010 deforestation cut-off date across the whole concession, PEFC effectively allows a plantation company to divide its land into ‘sustainably managed’ forest, likely mature plantations grown on land deforested before 2010, and areas where forest clearance continued well beyond that date. Once it has finished clearing natural forest and selling the deforestation timber, the company can then apply for certification for its mature plantations, with no requirement to redress the environmental or social harms resulting from the post-2010 clearance, or to restore destroyed forest.  

The fact that the PEFC could in 2024 certify the second-worst deforester in Indonesia’s plantation sector that year⁵⁹ as a source of sustainable timber shows that the scheme is incapable of ensuring a timber product comes from a source that even approaches sustainability. 

The fundamental weaknesses in these voluntary certification schemes and their implementation, particularly the lack of action to prevent companies misleadingly representing their Chain of Custody certification, has allowed large segments of the industry to present an unrealistic image of sustainability. Companies can enjoy the reputational and material benefits of appearing eco-friendly without ensuring genuine sustainability across their supply – therefore disincentivising more meaningful change. 

If implemented effectively, however, the EUDR has the potential to overcome some of these basic weaknesses in voluntary certification, and ensure that a customer buying wood products in the EU can be confident they are doing so from a company dealing only in legal and deforestation-free wood. Only regulatory action like the EUDR can compel all wood importers and sellers to exclude deforestation wood from their supply, thereby addressing the greenwashing that mars the industry today.