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Contact Earns Wood Certification
Contact Industries has completed the accreditation process to achieve the Forest Stewardship Council’s chain-of-custody certification for its architectural moulding and millwork components.
The move was prompted in part by customers’ requests for products that are LEED compliant, says Peter McKibbin, the company’s vice president. “But the larger impetus,” he explains, “was the desire to further validate what we already knew was an environmentally responsible manufacturing process we actually began in 1985. This recognition from FSC helps validate the resource efficient practices we’ve been using for many years.”
In its process, Contact Industries uses modern veneer slicing technology to produce as many as 50 identical veneered products from the same blank of hardwood lumber. This means that about 95 percent of the wood that enters the company’s manufacturing facility leaves as a usable product.
Contact has long offered customers the option of using FSC- and SFI-certified substrates and veneers. Now, with FSC chain-of-custody certification, those products can retain their certified status as they enter the end-use marketplace. “With a relatively new emphasis on the commercial construction market for our products, I expect this certification will give us a foothold in a number of projects seeking LEED certification which we previously had a difficult time breaking into,” McKibbin says
Auditing for the FSC chain-of-custody certification was conducted through the auspices of Scientific Certification Systems, which is an independent, third-party auditing organization based in Oakland, Calif.
Contact is capable of wrapping any species of real wood veneer over profiles in almost any substrate, including metal, vinyl, fiberglass and a variety of wood composite materials, it reports. In addition to wood veneers, the company applies synthetic materials, such as printed and embossed vinyl and impregnated cellulose over both wood and non-wood substrates.
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