Oritain Expands into Timber through Strategic Partnership with World Forest ID

Oritain has announced a strategic partnership with not-for-profit World Forest ID (WFID) to scientifically verify the harvest origin of timber. 

The need for credible timber origin verification has never been greater. The World Bank and INTERPOL estimates that 15-30% of the global timber trade is illegal, contributing to large-scale deforestation and up to USD$152 billion annually in lost revenue each year. With the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) coming into force in December 2025, companies also face growing expectations to prove the legality and traceability of their wood supply chains.

Through this collaboration, Oritain will apply its proven forensic scientific analysis, already trusted in sectors such as apparel, food and agriculture, to timber, panel and furniture samples from companies needing to mitigate risk in their supply chains using science. The results of this analysis will be evaluated using the World Forest ID Platform, which makes WFID’s unique reference sample collection and peer-reviewed origin models available at scale. This powerful combination enables precise and accurate scientific verification of timber’s geographic origin, providing court-admissible evidence that helps companies meet legal obligations and ensure ethical sourcing.

Oritain CEO Alyn Franklin said, “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."

WFID ’s globally recognised reference database, mapped by harvest location, enables accurate verification of timber product provenance, cutting through the opacity of complex supply chains.

“Ending export-driven deforestation means more than tweaking at the edges - we have to strip away supply chain plausible deniability and replace it with irrefutable science,” said Jade Saunders, Executive Director at World Forest ID.

“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.”

As regulatory scrutiny and stakeholder expectations intensify, the upcoming EU Deforestation Regulation deadline creates an urgent need for robust verification services. This partnership provides the timber industry with the tools to meet these compliance requirements and uphold sustainability commitments.

Together, Oritain and WFID aim to give organisations the tools they need to support responsible sourcing and environmental stewardship in the global timber industry.

This partnership builds on Oritain’s proven track record in origin verification across apparel, food, and agriculture, and follows its recent acquisition of Agroisolab GmbH in Germany, enhancing its global laboratory network and analytical capacity.

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About World Forest ID 
World Forest ID works at the intersection of science and law to create the data and tools necessary for current policy initiatives, designed to control illicit trade, increase corporate disclosure, support nature-based solutions to environmental challenges, to drive meaningful change in the forest and food sectors, and achieve real world impact.