World Forest ID has partnered with Oritain to expand the scale and accessibility of timber origin testing for companies. By combining leading science with global reach, the partnership offers companies a practical way of verifying the harvest origin of traded wood, helping strengthen due diligence and due care, protect brand reputation, and meet regulatory demands.
Complementary skills
Oritain has demonstrated the value of isotopic, elemental analysis in the cotton sector, where they have partnered with international brands like Lacoste, Welspun and Supima, harnessing forensic and data science to deliver trust and accountability across global supply chains. By combining that expertise with World Forest ID’s global reference collection of timber and forest-risk commodity samples and our new Evaluation Platform, which enables stakeholders to generate their own reports showing the most likely harvest location of products, we are now applying that same power to timber at market scale.
The context
The need for this is clear. ‘Paper-based’ systems alone are vulnerable to confusion and fraud, especially in complex international supply chains. Regulators are increasingly demanding robust proof of origin for market access and have recognized scientific testing as a credible solution, one that can also be used in legal contexts. At the same time, companies, including members of the Alliance for Wood ID Testing, are committing to more accountable supply chains and adopting chemical testing as a practical way to verify origin.
What is chemical testing?
Scientific traceability provides assurance by analyzing the chemistry of the wood itself, from freshly cut logs to finished products like tables and toys, and comparing it with the chemistry of trees at the claimed harvest source. Evaluation results are delivered through World Forest ID’s Platform in an easy-to-generate report that explains the analysis methods and quantifies confidence and uncertainty, giving stakeholders a clear standard for assessing and mitigating the risk of illegal timber in their supply chains.
To ensure that accessing testing is simple, and that results are both trusted and scalable, multiple parties have worked together to establish a standard process for timber testing. This process is applied across Oritain’s global laboratory network and other partner labs, so that wherever a test is conducted, the results are consistent and directly comparable.
World Forest ID Executive Director Jade Saunders said: “Oritain has shown the world what’s possible, delivering unique scale and accountability in global cotton supply chains."
"Together, we will bring that same disruptive clarity to forest-connected commodities. By fusing Oritain’s proven power to drive global supply chain change with World Forest ID’s non-profit approach to science, we create a new kind of transparency, one capable of shifting the choices of companies and investors, the expectations of regulators, and, we hope, the fate of the world’s forests. This partnership is more than the sum of its parts, it’s a blueprint for how science, trust, and global reach can change markets at speed and at scale.”
Oritain CEO Alyn Franklin added: “In the race against deforestation, this partnership supports both compliance and sustainability while reinforcing our mission to empower responsible decision-making across global supply chains. By combining our expertise in forensic science and WFID’s Evaluation Platform, trained on its global reference database, we’re delivering trusted, scalable solutions that have a positive impact on people and our planet."
