The NWPC board of directors has decided to revise the NTR documents in its mission to continuously improve the competitiveness and quality of durable-treated wood.

The NTR documents will be complemented with NTR Contracts to specify the business relations and administrative instructions for the different stakeholders to the NTR System and the NWPC. There will be a specific contract between NWPC and the Control bodies, the preservative manufacturers, the National associations, and NTR licenced wood producers.

The contracts will state the rights and obligations of the parties and at the same time make the NTR documents more focused on “standardization”. There are need for administrative improvements to keep up with changes in the industry, use of IT and European laws and regulations.

The new contracts will be complementing the NTR documents and be an integral part of the NTR wood durability quality system.

The general idéa is not to change, but to document what has become praxis over the years. There will be some minor changes for the stakeholders but most things will be, business as usual at least for the producers that comply. The biggest difference with the new setup will be the legal control over the right to use the NTR mark. Currently the right to mark is given “automatically” by the Control bodies, following the NTR certificate. With the new NTR documents and the contracts the Control bodies will issue certificates and NWPC will licence the right to use the NTR mark subject to that the producer fulfills its obligations.

The NTR portal is under development and will provide administrative services to the stakeholders and the NWPC secretariat. All companies and associations will have a NTR Portal account to manage its relation and its obligations to NWPC such as information, reporting or uploading current certificates. Users and the public will find current information about companies and preservatives and the current status on licenced companies and digitally signed NTR certificates. Merchants and specifiers will be able to search and retrieve product licences, product marking and information in digital form through application programming interface (API).

Stakeholder work groups will take part in the relevant part of this work and will have the opportunity to influence the final versions of the contracts and documents.