Damning review of forestry auditors

Slash left behind in Tolaga Bay after the June storm of 2018. An international company’s review of the practices of two New Zealand auditing companies in the wake of storm events in the region has highlighted major nonconformities. Gisborne Herald file picture

An international forestry auditor has spoken out about a visit to the slash-damaged East Coast region last year.

German-based Assurance Services International sent an auditor to the region to review the work of two auditing companies — Société Générale de Surveillance (SGS) and Preferred by Nature — which are responsible for overseeing East Coast forests.

The result was a damning report highlighting many nonconformities in auditing practices.

The visit was in response to public concern over the level of damage caused by forest slash after severe storms in 2017, 2018 and 2023.

ASI Global programme manager David Grunelle has spoken out about what was found, saying the work was severely below acceptable standards.

Each year, they highlighted about 400 cases of poor management practices worldwide. About 58 of those were deemed to have nonconformity issues to a major level, but the New Zealand companies were at the most serious end of offending.

“The ones we found in New Zealand were severe enough to trigger some sanctioning straight away, which is not something we encounter that many times a year.

“We would probably encounter the situation from one to five times a year. And we will not be able to close those nonconformities until they demonstrate to us that not only they understood the issues well, but that they implemented in their systems any corrective actions and not only corrected in the short term, but also that their systems will prevent the audits having this type of issue in the future.”

ASI will not instruct the two auditing companies what changes to make to their systems because it needs to remain impartial, but it expects to see the nonconformities resolved withinin three months of the report being issued.

The companies can ask for an extension to complete the work.

Grunelle said because of the scale of the issues on the East Coast, ASI would come back later this year to check out other forest auditors around New Zealand.

“Just to make sure that the rest of New Zealand is OK and other conformities assistance bodies that were not assessed in New Zealand recently are also good. So we’re going to make sure everything is OK.”

International audits of New Zealand-based companies were part of a normal business routine, but ASI said it was increasing its reviews in response to the findings here.

As a result of the visits made late last year in February, Malaysian-owned Ernslaw One lost its internationally recognised Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, which indicates trees were harvested in a responsible way.

On March 28, SGS suspended the FSC sustainability accreditation of a second East Coast forestry company, Aratu Forests. — RNZ