IKEA and Brazil: “This furniture industry relies on ecological degradation and profits from it”
IKEA and Brazil: “This furniture industry relies on ecological degradation and profits from it”
Part V: Industrial tree plantations and environmental fines in Brazil.
The recent Arte documentary about the impacts of IKEA’s massive timber consumption doesn’t only focus on the forests of Europe, where IKEA sources the majority of its wood.
The Arte documentary team travels to the state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, where IKEA is expanding its operations. In 2022, IKEA opened a store in Chile, its first store in South America. In 2023, another followed in Colombia. Over the next few years, IKEA plans to build a dozen new stores in South America.
Sílvia Lisboa, an investigative journalist with Agência Fronteira, explains to the Arte documentary team that,
“Brazil is an important wood supplier for IKEA. The country has six million hectares of industrial tree plantations, with one million hectares just in Rio Grande do Sul. Eucalyptus is predominant for the pulp industry, but now pine plantations are catching up, because pine is better suited for making furniture.”
An investigative NGO, Disclose, worked with the Arte documentary team to trace IKEA’s supply chain. On its website, Disclose explains that it used customs and maritime data to identify 40 containers on their way to IKEA’s factory at Malacky in Slovakia. The containers were full of pine and wood fibre planks.
On 30 September 2023, they arrived in the Port of Hamburg, Germany from Porto Alegre in the south of Brazil. The timber came from a company called Artemobili. In 2023, IKEA bought US$34.4 million worth of goods from Artemobili, according to Brazilian customs.
IKEA’s monocultures
Loblolly pine orignally comes from the United States. The species was introduced to Brazil in the 1960s. It grows well in Brazil and large areas are being planted with monocultures of loblolly pine.
The Arte documentary team speaks to forest owner Cristiano Kroeff, who sees establishing pine plantations as a money-making opportunity. He has established pine plantations on the farm that his grandparents bought in the 1940s.
Kroeff says,
“We launched our company, Parcel Reflorestadora, in 2000. We started working in the forestry sector then, but this land has been in the family for generations. Initially, this farm was primarily for cattle ranching. There were some forestry operations back then, but it was minimal. In the 2000s, the forestry sector became very lucrative, so we decided to invest. I come from a finance background and my brother is a lawyer. Today we have 1,650 hectares of pine plantations out of a total area of 2,700 hectares. . . .
“The climate is ideal here, with plenty of sunshine and rain. There’s nowhere better than here to plant pine and eucalyptus trees. While it takes 60 years in Europe to achieve this size of pine tree, it only takes 20 years here, so the competitive advantage of our region is what prompted us to invest and choose loblolly pine. Thanks to this we are more competitive and we will continue to be so in the future. . . .
“Timber from forests will be replaced by timber grown in plantations. That is now a reality and will continue to expand.”
But loblolly pine plantations consume large amounts of water and last year Rio Grande do Sul faced a drought. As the climate crisis intensifies, droughts are likely to become more frequent and longer lasting.
Another problem is that the industrial tree plantations (in addition to agriculture, especially soy plantations) in Rio Grande do Sul are threatening the Brazilian Pampa. Since 1985, this biodiverse grassland ecosystem has shrunk by almost one-third. The forestry industry plans to expand the area of industrial tree plantations in Rio Grande do Sul to four times the current area.
IKEA’s supplier fined for environmental violations
Every month, Kroeff sells 1,000 tons of wood to ArteMobili. The furniture manufacturer makes Hemnes bookshelves, Hemnes TV stands, Expevär beds, and Trofast storage units, mainly for IKEA’s stores in the US.
Disclose found out that ArteMobili’s factory on the outskirts of Nova Prata is not as environmentally friendly as it claims.
Sílvia Lisboa explains in the documentary that,
“Our investigation revealed that ArteMobili has been fined twice for serious environmental violations. The first is related to the logging of primary forest and the illegal disposal of chemicals that they buried. In 2018, FEPAM, the control body of the State Secretariat for the Environment fined ArteMobili 30,000 reals, approximately €5,700. More recently, in 2022, ArteMobili was fined again.”
This time the IKEA sub-contractor was fined for building a sawmill without authorisation in the area where it had cleared forest. “This shows a certain disregard for regulations on the part of the company,” Lisboa says.
ArteMobili was reluctant to talk about any of this. “I don’t know anything about this case,” Rafaël Bocchi, the director of operations at ArteMobili, says. “Perhaps the management, or the legal department, knows more about it. Our manufacturing process meets international quality standards.”
Lisboa comments that,
“IKEA has a code of conduct for its supply chain called IWAY. It imposes a series of rules to ensure that suppliers are impeccable. But when we see that ArteMobili has been fined for environmental violations, it raises questions about the extent to which IKEA enforces this code of conduct and how closely the supply chain is monitored.”
IKEA’s response to the Arte documentary team’s questions about this, was to state that,
“We take any violation of our code of conduct seriously. We expect compliance with local laws and regulations at all times from all suppliers.”
IKEA blames its sub-contractors. “This is how it has avoided prosecution for decades,” the Arte documentary states.
In Brazil, however, the law just might catch up with IKEA. “I fully understand Ikea’s responsibility in this economic chain,” Annelise Steigleder, the Rio Grande do Sul prosecutor in charge of the environment, says.
“It’s very important. In Brazil, we have legislation that would allow us to hold this company accountable, for environmental damage caused in our country. We know that this furniture industry relies on ecological degradation and profits from it. This would allow us to hold the company benefiting from this degradation accountable.”
That is great news - a country big enough (Brazil) to actually hold someone's feet to the fire! Oh happy day!