Your office desk, kitchen cabinets, toilet paper, and shipping pallets—wood products are everywhere. Starting December 30, 2025, every wood product entering the EU needs deforestation-free proof. For the industry that literally turns forests into products, EUDR isn’t just regulation—it’s an existential reckoning.

Wood’s EUDR Complexity

Unlike agricultural commodities, wood products involve:

• Direct forest impact: Trees are the forest.
• Processing complexity: One log becomes dozens of products.
• Value chain length: From forest to furniture store.
• Species diversity: Different trees, different compliance requirements.

The Wood Products Universe

• Solid Wood: Furniture, construction lumber, flooring.
• Engineered Products: Plywood, particleboard, MDF.
• Paper Products: Everything from newspapers to packaging.
• Specialty Items: Musical instruments, tool handles, decorative items.

Each category has different supply chain structures and compliance challenges.

Why Wood Traceability Is Genuinely Hard

• Forest Management: One forest concession might have 50+ tree species.
• Sawmill Mixing: Different logs processed together.
• Product Transformation: One tree becomes multiple product types.
• International Trade: Wood crosses borders multiple times during processing.
• Chain of Custody: Maintaining wood identity through multiple processing steps is a massive challenge, and one mistake can invalidate the entire batch.

Wood’s Unique EUDR Risks

• Illegal Logging: Unlike agriculture, illegal timber operations are common.
• Indigenous Rights: Forest concessions often affect indigenous communities.
• Documentation: Forest management documentation varies wildly by country.
• Chain of Custody: Maintaining wood identity through multiple processing steps.
• The “Exemption” Myth: Some sources or types of wood may appear low-risk, but the EUDR requires a full due diligence statement for all wood products, regardless of perceived risk.

What Wood Importers Get Wrong

• Assuming plantation wood is automatically compliant (expansion matters).
• Not verifying forest concession legality and boundaries.
• Ignoring mixed-species processing challenges.
• Overlooking paper product supply chains (often most complex).
• Believing existing certifications are enough. While schemes like FSC are a good start, they do not automatically cover all EUDR requirements, such as land-use change after 2020.

Wake-Up Call

EU wood imports: €45+ billion annually.

Furniture industry: 60% of wood from high-risk regions.

Construction sector: Major supply chain disruptions likely.

Paper industry: Complete supply chain restructuring needed.

Wood might grow on trees, but EUDR compliance doesn’t.

You need to see the forest and the trees—and your supply chain might involve illegal logging and mixed-species processing.

n’entropy allows you to track timber from forest concession to finished product, maintain chain of custody through complex processing, and monitor harvest areas in real-time. We help you ensure every piece of furniture, every sheet of paper, is fully compliant and can be traced back to a legal, deforestation-free source.