What Is Chain of Cus­tody Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion? Chain of cus­tody (CoC) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is a method to trace cer­ti­fied raw mate­ri­als from the for­est to the fac­tory, through ship­ping and man­u­fac­tur­ing, to the final end prod­uct. Com­pa­nies that achieve COC cer­ti­fi­ca­tion may use the LEI label, which guar­an­tees legal wood prod­ucts that can be traced to a sus­tain­able, LEI cer­ti­fied source.

How Does It Works? Inde­pen­dent third party cer­ti­fiers con­duct assess­ments of an inter­ested company’s sup­ply chain. The assess­ment focuses on design­ing and imple­ment­ing sys­tems to reli­ably track cer­ti­fied mate­ri­als back to the for­est. If the mate­ri­als’ path is secure and meets LEI stan­dards, the com­pany is granted COC certification.

Why Your Com­pany Needs CoC Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion? CoC cer­ti­fi­ca­tion links sus­tain­able forestry to con­sumer pref­er­ence and cer­ti­fied prod­ucts to the mar­ket place.

With­out CoC cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, sus­tain­able for­est prod­ucts can­not be labeled.

With­out labels, com­pa­nies can­not show their prod­ucts are from sus­tain­able sources, and con­sumers can­not choose cer­ti­fied prod­ucts over less sus­tain­able options.

Con­sumers need a label they can trust and com­pa­nies need a sup­ply sys­tem that works, and LEI CoC cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­vides both.