U.S. consumers risk using flooring products made of wood illegally logged from Cambodia’s rainforests, a recent Mongabay investigation suggests. The investigation focused on companies in Cambodia’s Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone (SEZ) that manufacture furniture and engineered wood flooring for the U.S. market. One company in particular, Chinese-owned Nature Flooring (Cambodia), sources its plywood cores from Angkor Plywood, our team found. Angkor Plywood is a Cambodian company that’s been accused of illegally logging timber from protected areas like Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary. “We buy from Angkor Plywood … the company provides eucalyptus and acacia, they have their own plantation in Kandal province,” Jin Tian Liao, a translator for Nature Flooring’s management, told Mongabay. He admitted, however, that the company staff had never visited the plantation. “They grow it, we buy it, we produce flooring and sell that to the U.S.,” he said. Past investigations have found that Angkor Plywood, co-owned by former logger Chea Pov and Taiwanese national Lu Chu Chang, doesn’t have a plantation in Kandal, only a factory. Chang also heads Think Biotech, a company later rebranded to Holy Plantation, that, on paper, has a timber plantation in Kratie province on the border of Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary. While Jin indicated Nature Flooring was buying acacia and eucalyptus from this plantation, Holy Plantation has been accused of relying heavily on wood illegally logged from inside Prey Lang rather than timber that’s plantation-grown. “They [Nature Flooring] themselves don’t know what it is that they’re selling,” a timber industry insider told…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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