Cologne, July 2024

Verlags- und Medien Aktiengesellschaft (VEMAG), which specialises in the discount and promotional business, is preparing for the implementation of the EUDR (European Deforestation Regulation) for all productions delivered subsequent to 30 December 2024. We have identified the requirements stemming from the EUDR for our company, and are working intensively to fulfil them – even if there are, unfortunately, many unanswered questions that remain regarding the implementation of the EU’s new statutory framework.

Legal obligation

Due to our company size, all products we place on the market after 30 December 2024 must comply with the EUDR requirements. We do not currently expect this deadline to be postponed. Nevertheless, we are closely monitoring political developments in the EU and are in close contact with the relevant associations and interest groups.

The underlying aim of our efforts is to work closely with our suppliers and their upstream suppliers, in order to ensure that we remain able to deliver at all times and fulfil the legal requirements.

Status Quo

Meeting the EUDR requirements, particularly the geolocation of forests from which the raw material “wood” in our products originates, presents significant challenges for us and our upstream suppliers (foresters, paper manufacturers, and printers).

Therefore, we have established a task force consisting of internal management and external experts in ESG, IT, procurement, and legal. Among others, we are advised by two law firms specialising in commercial law. An extensive package of measures has been initiated; here are the two most important:

Our measures

1. ESG software solution osapiens

The data required to prove deforestation-free status will be provided via the osapiens-hub in the future. The implementation of this ESG software solution has been underway in our company for several weeks. This concerns an application that has already been tried and tested at all stages of the value chain, and can be utilised to track and process the necessary data on all EUDR-relevant raw materials.

We chose this tool because we know that many of our customers also use this solution.

2. Intensification of collaboration with the FSC

As a certified member, we are working more closely than ever with the FSC and closely monitoring the development of the FSC Tool “Trace” (a blockchain solution). We hope that the FSC, as an experienced partner of all parties involved in the process, will succeed in providing the required geodata in time.

History: have we contributed to deforestation in the past?

We have reason to believe that our products have not contributed to global deforestation in the past:

• Since 2011, all our printing has been done exclusively on FSC-certified paper.

• Throughout the entire supply chain, VEMAG has worked exclusively with producers audited by BSCI since 2011.

• Since 2021, VEMAG companies have only worked with producers who comply with the ISO 14001 environmental management system standard.

• Our in-house quality assurance department consistently ensures these high standards in the publishing world.

Supplement to vemag_sustain

We see our efforts to implement the EUDR as a necessary addition to our sustainability project “vemag_sustain”, which was launched in 2023 and deals with the topics of carbon footprint, materiality analysis, preparation of a sustainability report in accordance with the recognised and CSRD-compliant standard of the DNK (German Sustainability Code) and the adoption of an expanded, Group-wide climate strategy.

What comes next?

We will inform you about the use of our data in the osapiens-hub in the fourth quarter of 2024.

If you have any further questions about the implementation of the EUDR at VEMAG companies, please use all known communication channels to contact us or the following addresses.

Contact us

On the implementation of the EUDR Regulation at VEMAG: eudr@vemag-medien.de

On the subject of sustainability at VEMAG:  sustainability@vemag-medien.de