Sustainable Teak for Decking Comes from Thailand

Teak is a fast-growing, renewable resource. This is a forest of 2-year-old trees.
Not too long ago, we ran a post courtesy of Blog Board member and Eurodam Chief Officer Andre van Schoonhoven about how they install the teak decks on the ship. That prompted a question from a reader about where the teak decking comes from.

Andre found the answer for us: “The teak comes from Santi Forestry in Thailand, and is shipped under coding Green Point 5, which means it comes from an ISO-certified [International Standards Organization] plantation, where for every tree cut three new ones are planted and then later thinned out.”

Santi Forestry has been around since 1972 and focuses on the efficient use of harvested timber to extract the maximum product from the raw material as well as responsible environmental stewardship. Here’s how the company describes its practices on its Web site:

All of the products are manufactured from forest trees grown in managed and sustainable yield programs, preferably from Southeast Asian countries. Every shipment of logs is carefully inspected during the procurement process to identify and classify its origin, form, grade, and defects. Only logs from qualified sites with quality that meets our standards are selected.

SFG supports sustainable forest management and other forest conservation programs. We also support efforts in Southeast Asian countries that promote forest certification and development process, in line with ITTO, the Forest Stewardship Council, and ISO standard for sustainable forest management. In addition to protecting the source of our raw materials, the SFG’s quality production methods and ingenious product design ensure a minimum usage of the natural resource for maximum benefit.