Indonesia sends the EU plywood, furniture, mouldings and paper, and it occupies a unique position in EU timber policy: it was the first and only country whose FLEGT licences gave shipments an automatic legality pass under the old EUTR. EUDR keeps a version of that recognition and removes the free ride. If you buy Indonesian wood products, this page explains exactly what your SVLK and FLEGT paperwork still proves, and what it no longer exempts you from.
FLEGT under EUDR: legality yes, green lane no
Under EUTR, a FLEGT-licensed shipment needed no further due diligence at all. Under EUDR the licence keeps a defined value: timber covered by a valid FLEGT licence is deemed to satisfy the legality requirement of the regulation. That is real work you no longer have to do, since Indonesian legality (harvest rights, permits, royalties) is exactly what the SVLK verification system behind the licence audits. What the licence does not touch: the deforestation-free requirement against the 2020 cutoff, the geolocation of harvest plots, the risk assessment for a standard-risk country, and the DDS itself. Operators who ran Indonesian supply on autopilot under EUTR have the largest gap to close of any timber buyers; the EUDR vs EUTR guide itemises the differences.
Two supply bases, two evidence problems
Indonesian wood reaching the EU splits between natural-forest concessions (the source of meranti plywood and heavier joinery species) and fast-rotation plantations of acacia and eucalyptus feeding pulp, paper and some furniture lines. Concession harvesting is mapped: annual work plans define cutting blocks with coordinates, which is your polygon source, and blocks run far beyond 4 hectares. The screening question there is degradation and conversion at the concession edge. Plantation supply inverts the question, as in Brazil: the stands themselves are crops, and what matters is that they do not sit on land cleared of natural forest after 2020, a live issue where plantation expansion has pushed into forest and peat. Peatland legality adds a second layer, since drainage and burning restrictions are part of Indonesian law and therefore part of your Article 3 legality conclusion.
Getting the data through a manufacturing chain
Most EU buyers of Indonesian wood buy furniture or panels, not logs, and the mill that made them bought from multiple concessions or plantation blocks. The SVLK system already forces mills to document input origin, so the data chain exists on paper; your task is to contract its release in geometric form: harvest-block polygons per production batch, carried through the manufacturer to your shipment. Furniture importers should push this clause one tier up, to the panel or component maker, where the origin knowledge actually lives. Species declarations (scientific names, required on every wood DDS) come from the same paperwork.
Buying sequence for Indonesian wood products
- Keep collecting FLEGT licences: they discharge the legality limb and remain strong evidence.
- Contract harvest-block or plantation-stand polygons per batch, with species lists, through the manufacturer.
- Screen polygons against the cutoff, with peat and concession-boundary layers in the evidence mix.
- File the DDS and archive licence plus geometry together for five years.
Indonesian sourcing rarely stops at wood: the same landscapes and often the same corporate groups supply palm oil, and the mixed estate-and-smallholder data patterns there will feel familiar.