Europe’s deforestation rules are reaching the standard behind certified Australian fibre, and comment closes 7 August

Print and packaging buyers meet AS/NZS 4708 mostly as a logo. It sits behind the Responsible Wood Certification Scheme, and that scheme is endorsed by PEFC, which Responsible Wood describes as the world’s largest forest certification system. In New Zealand the same standard underpins the PEFC-recognised sustainable forest management scheme. So when 4708 changes, the meaning of a certification mark on Australian and New Zealand fibre changes with it.

The current edition is AS/NZS 4708:2021, and this is Amendment One to it. Responsible Wood, which develops the standard, opened public comment on 28 May 2026 and it closes on 7 August 2026. The revision cycle runs every five years, and 2021 was the last update, so this is the scheduled review rather than an emergency one.

The reason for the amendment

Here is the sentence that makes this more than a routine standards notice. Responsible Wood says the latest updates reflect changes to the PEFC International Standard for Sustainable Forest Management, PEFC ST 1003:2024, which it says was “introduced to align PEFC with the European Deforestation Regulation”, together with stakeholder feedback received since 2021.

That is a chain worth stating plainly, and we are attributing it to Responsible Wood because it is their account of their own standard’s rationale. The European Union makes a deforestation rule. PEFC, an international certification body, changes its global standard to line up with it. The Australian and New Zealand standard then changes to track PEFC. At no point does an Australian parliament vote. For an Australian printer or packaging converter, the practical effect is the same as regulation: the requirements behind the mark on your certified stock move.

This is the ordinary mechanism by which international certification schemes transmit regulatory change across borders, and it is not sinister. It is worth understanding because it is invisible from inside the Australian legislative process, which is where most people look for the rules that will affect them.

Who wrote the draft

The revised draft came from the Standards Reference Committee, which Responsible Wood says includes representatives from forest management, forest research, auditing, government, community organisations, environmental groups, Indigenous stakeholders, industry and labour unions, across both Australia and New Zealand. The review is being run in accordance with Standards Australia procedures; Responsible Wood is accredited as a Standards Development Organisation and is accredited to develop Australian and New Zealand standards.

Responsible Wood chief executive Simon Dorries put the case for commenting this way: sustainable forest management, he said, “impacts a wide range of people and sectors both directly and indirectly, from forest managers through to processors, builders, designers, retailers, environmental groups, communities and consumers”.

Note where printers and converters sit in that list: under “processors”, between the forest and the retailer. It is a sector with a direct commercial interest in what the standard requires and, on the evidence of who usually files submissions to forestry standards, one that rarely says anything.

What to actually do, if you are going to do anything

Both documents are published and downloadable: the public comment draft of Amendment One and the submission sheet, both in Word format. Comment closes 7 August 2026, which is ten days from publication of this story.

Our view, and it is a view: the useful thing for a printer or packaging business to check in the draft is not the environmental language, which is what most submissions will address, but anything that changes what a certificate holder must evidence and how often. Chain-of-custody obligations are where a forest-management standard reaches down the supply chain into businesses that never touch a tree, and a requirement that is cheap for a forest manager can be expensive for a converter three steps away. If the amendment moves that line, the time to say so is before 7 August, not when the audit arrives.

Follow-up, 28 July 2026. We have since read the draft amendment itself. It adds three new clauses, writes the European Deforestation Regulation’s 31 December 2006 conversion cut-off into the standard, and inserts free, prior and informed consent. It also answers the question this story left open: the new obligations fall on forest managers, not on chain-of-custody holders. What the draft actually changes.

The related thread

AS/NZS 4708 is the forest management half of the certification picture. The chain-of-custody half, AS 4707, is the one most printers hold directly, and it is a separate standard on its own cycle. Worth watching whether an amended 4708 pulls 4707 behind it, which is the usual pattern once an international scheme has moved.