Foundation SWPS

At the international market, timber trading companies face high standards regarding product quality, homogeneity, and continual supply. Wood processing companies in Suriname realize the importance to increase their standards to respond to such international demands and to receive better prices for their products. Next, occupational safety and health, and process improvement to reach higher yields are becoming more important to them. However, such improvements do need changes that result in costly adjustments, which often exceed reasonable short-term investments of the relatively small companies. It forces these companies to cooperate in organizing sector wide activities to achieve quality improvement.


In 2008 wood processing companies participated in a planer moulder training. Due to the success of the training, wood processing companies decided to collectively hire an environment expert for on-site training later that year. These training activities were a first step towards professionalizing wood processing at those companies. These developments triggered the wood processing industry to take bigger steps forward to:

 

  1. Professionalize their processes;
  2. Increase the product yields,
  3. Establish less vulnerable position at the national and ultimately the international markets by increasing its competitiveness.

 

At the beginning of 2009 the Foundation Sustainable Wood Processing in Suriname (FSWPS) was established to organize and coordinate the quality improvement activities in the wood processing sector from a central point. Part of the foundation are: Remas NV, Ramzon NV, CPF and Suma Lumber.


Objectives

The establishment of this foundation is an initiative of four prominent wood processing companies in Suriname and aims at the promotion of sustainable forest management, through systematically establishing, improving and integrating processes relating to forest exploitation, wood processing and all related activities to achieve yield increase at all branches of the timber industry.

The foundation is open for cooperation with companies active in the sector for dissemination purposes or participation in other related organizations that promote the aim of the foundation. The activities of the foundation and this project in specific, will not only have an impact on the operational management and wood processing of above mentioned companies, as training and study results will be open for other interested companies, which will result in a sector-wide spin-off effect and create quality improvement in the total wood processing sector of Suriname. By means of this program the foundation wants to accomplish a structural approach for the improvement of the current wood processing industry standards.


The forest and timber sector of Suriname counts several representing organizations that mainly focus on policy intervention. The FSWPS is the first and only organization in the sector with clear and directed actions towards quality improvement and competitiveness enhancement, and will function as a pilot to the sector.


Cooperation with the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB)

The Foundation for Sustainable Wood Processing in Suriname (FSWPS) with financial support from the IDB has launched its project “Quality Improvement of the Wood Processing Industry in Suriname” (project code ATN/ME-12144-SU). It is financed partly by the IDB and partly by the Foundation itself. The project is implemented from 2010 to 2013.


Quality improvement at a large scale is a quite new priority amongst wood processing companies, and the project is aimed at strengthening and responding to this newly acquired priority.
The general goal of the SWP Project is to enhance the competitiveness of Suriname’s wood processing industry by increasing the quality level of wood processing. The specific goals of the project are to improve existing wood processing practices and promote market opportunities. To reach the specific goal, several components were developed, of which the results can be found on this website:

 

  1. Monitoring and Technical Improvement;
  2. Training and Knowledge Dissemination;
  3. Product Development and Marketing.