As the first printing house in LIthuania, PRINT IT UAB has achieved PEFC and FSC chain of custody certification.
No other Lithuanian printing house is so far certified under any of the two schemes.
Demands from Scandinavia
However, Managing Director of PRINT IT, Tomas Kocius, believes that this situation will soon change:
"We think that in future, being certified will become increasingly important on the marketplace, so we decided to pioneer FSC and PEFC certification among the printing sector in Lithuania. We are proud to be the first company in our country to achieve this!" he says. "Also, almost all our production is exported to Scandinavia, where the ability to demonstrate our social and environmental commitment is now crucial".
The greening of the Baltic paper sector
With the certification of PRINT IT, there are now certified printing houses as well as certified paper merchants based in all three Baltic countries.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were among the world's first countries to officially commit themselves to forest certification. Certification of local wood- and paper-based enterprises soon followed, and certification has grown faster than ever in the Baltics during the past couple of years – despite quite serious effects of the global finance crunch in the region.
Currently, there are 273 FSC Chain of Custody holders and 9 PEFC Chain of Custody certificate holders in the Baltic countries, according to the most recent information available on the international FSC and PEFC websites, respectively.
| FSC CoC certificates | PEFC CoC certificates | |
| Estonia | 60 | 5 |
| Latvia | 125 | 1 |
| Lithuania | 55 | 3 |
SOURCES: FSC certificates – the FSC database. PEFC certificates – PEFC Council Information Register. The PEFC register was last updated on 31st of August 2009.
PRINT IT UAB holds the FSC certificate SW-COC-004309 and the PEFC certificate no. 14502013. The certificates were issued by NEPCon's system accredited partners, based on NEPCon's services. The FSC certificate was issued by the Rainforest Alliance, while the PEFC certificate was issued by BMG Trada Certifiering AB.
Related stories
The Baltic paper sector starts moving towards FSC (28/2 2008)
First Norwegian printing house FSC and PEFC certified (22/4 2009)
New report outlines the green future of paper (March 2009)
FSC multi-site certification of 18 Danish printing houses (August 2008)
FSC remains hot among paper and printing industries (June 2008)
