A comprehensive report* has identified serious concerns about the quality of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) auditing and whether the logging company, Hancock Victoria Plantations (HVP) is in compliance with their own commitments to protect nature under the FSC.

• The report reviews the performance SCS Global Services (SCS), the company who certified HVP for FSC membership and regularly audits HVP to determine whether they are meeting ongoing requirements under the FSC Standard.
• Investors, consumers, and environmental groups, including the Gippsland Forest Guardians, rely on the accuracy and professionalism of FSC audit reports to make informed decisions. They depend on these reports to confirm that companies like HVP are genuinely meeting the requirements of the FSC standard.
• The assessment process** resulted in four adverse findings against SCS relating to the way they audited HVP.   
• The most serious finding was the major non-conformance issued after the Lead Assessor concluded that SCS had failed to identify eight different and important non-conformances with HVP's compliance with the FSC Standard.  According to the report, SCS failed to identify non-conformances in the areas of Environmental Values and Impacts, Stakeholder Engagement and 'Maintaining and/or enhancing High Conservation Values'.  It is understood that the status for the major non-conformance is categorised as 'on hold'.

One very practical example of a non-conformance that was missed by SCS but that has now been picked up by this assessment details that HVP have not been identifying and therefore properly protecting rainforest.

Lisa Barrand, spokesperson for the Gippsland Forest Guardians said; "The message from this report is simple.  SCS has not been properly auditing HVP against the FSC standard.  It is inexplicable to us that these non-conformances have persisted without detection for over three years, and despite the fact that SCS conducted three different 'on ground' audits during that time. These problems might never have been found without this assessment process, a process that only came about as a result of complaints initiated by ourselves and other community members. Surely FSC auditors should be picking up these significant non-conformances without the need for extraordinary efforts from community members." she said.

Where to from here?

"As we have said previously, HVPs recent decision to regenerate the Fella's Coupe site back to native forest and preserve it for conservation purposes is a great decision and is absolutely welcomed by the community.  However, based on the findings of this report, there are likely to be many other FSC certified sites across the Strzelecki Ranges that have rainforest, threatened species, and native forest and that been destroyed or damaged in similar ways. We believe that these should now be repaired and protected using the same approach." she said.

"We are aware that HVP are taking active steps to improve their procedures for future operations, and we encourage and support them to do so, however reparations must be made for what has been destroyed and damaged.  All of these undetected non-conformances occurred while HVP were cutting down and selling the timber from these sites at a premium FSC certified price." she said.  "We would hope that they make good on repairing any damage done as a result of these findings."

Notes

*For simplicity of access, Gippsland Forest Guardians have provided a pdf of the full assessment report (and a short summary of the major non conformance here) however the original can be found on the ASI Website. 

** The assessment process itself was quite straightforward.  The Lead Assessor from ASI, (the global assurance organisation for the FSC), retraced the same audit steps that SCS followed for their most recent (2024/2025) audit of HVP, and evaluated whether they would have reached the same conclusions as found in SCSs audit report with regard to HVPs compliance with the FSC Australia Standard and other relevant FSC documents.  The Lead Assessor read the same documents that had been reviewed by SCS, spoke to the same people and visited the same sites.  Gippsland Forest Guardians were involved with the assessment process due to the fact that we had made complaints regarding Fella's Track, one of HVPs sites in Gippsland, Victoria Australia that had been incorporated into the 2024/2025 audit.