The firm said it had successfully retained the chain of custody certification in its latest audit for everything except “controlled wood”, which is used in Reflex and includes timber sourced from Victorian native forests.

Essentially, this means Australian Paper the company is FSC-certified but one of its product lines, Reflex, is not.

According to Australian Paper, the FSC audit process offered “insufficient time for us to address [requirements designated by FSC] and so we elected to withdraw controlled wood from our certification”.

Shaun Scallan, general manager for corporate responsibility, said the majority of its controlled wood is certified by the Australian Forestry Standard (AFS) and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification), which he regards at the benchmarks.

“Australian Paper has held chain of custody certification since 2006,” he said.

“However, we have decided to remove the ‘controlled wood’ component from our certification at this time as there has been uncertainty around the interpretation of key elements of the standards.”

The paper company has been under fire from environmental group the Wilderness Society over its use of products sourced from native forests.

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