CMO South Africa Group Scheme provides both FSC™ (FSC-C150700) and PEFC (ZA-2300000223) Forest Management (FM) certification for both small growers and other forest owners.

CMO South Africa has been certified for FSC FM since August 2019 and CMO is now managing hundreds of members with a focus on small timber growers. This number is growing monthly enabling more members to sell their forest products as certified.

Over the last 4 years, CMO has positioned itself as an enabler, empowering millions of small growers to trade their responsibly produced forest products in the mainstream global market. Our purpose is to empower millions of smallholders to plant and manage billions of trees world-wide.

We utilize the group scheme approach mentioned above as a structure to successfully roll out compliance solutions for smallholders both for forest certification as well as for EUDR. For group

schemes to be cost-effective, they need to be simple, affordable, and thus scalable at a national level. CMO’s service offering now, for the first time, unblocks the challenge of successfully scaling group schemes in a sustainable forest product value chain.

While CMO typically holds FSC/PEFC/EUDR certificates on behalf of members and manages their compliance, we also accommodate customers who prefer to run their group schemes. Our innovative approach retains the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of the CMO model, opening avenues for

producers to participate in the market for sustainably produced forest products. Our digital system streamlines the process, aligning seamlessly with FSC/PEFC/EUDR standards.

CMO South Africa also manages FSC (FSC-C155102) / PEFC (SGSCH-PEFC-COC-600013) Chain-of- Custody group schemes certificates, designed for the certification of independent small enterprises that, by forming a group, can have easier access to FSC certification by sharing the costs of

certification and benefiting from technical support and control provided by a Central Office function to enable small individual companies to be COC certified.

Furthermore, CMO Group and our consultants have been extensively involved in all aspects of carbon project development to the trading of the emission reductions of the projects, since the inception of the carbon market initiation in 2002, ranging from project identification, concept

development, methodology development to taking viable projects through validation, registration and verification and subsequent trading.

For inquiries about our certification support services, please contact corris@cmogroup.io.