An Exploratory Assessment of FSC Chain of Custody Certification Benefits in Croatian Wood Industry

Croatian State Forest Enterprise covers more than seventy five percent of forest area in the Republic of Croatia and it is the biggest supplier of Croatian wood industry companies. From the year of national forests FSC certifi cation (2002) onwards, the number of issued FSC CoC certifi cates has exceeded two hundred. The increase of issued FSC certifi cates confirms that CoC certification has become a very important segment of the Croatian wood industry. In this research, the survey among Croatian FSC CoC certifi cate holders has been conducted. The aim of the research was to determine the reasons of implementing FSC CoC certifi cation, benefits of certification and problems arising out of implementation. The research has shown that the respondents were forced to implement FSC CoC by the request from their customers. Furthermore, respondents stated that the most important benefit from FSC CoC implementation was to keep the existing customers and for the largest part of respondents the main problem in FSC CoC implementation was related to high certification costs. Regarding the financial benefits of FSC CoC certification for respondents, the results showed small, but signifi cant positive correlation between certification duration and efficiency of total equity, as well as between certifi cation duration and return on assets.