Problem: A Timber Products Inspection (TP) customer ships wooden packaging material to China that is later discovered to contain a nematode.
Solution: TPI conducts tests and provides support material to show is an isolated incident and helps defuse the situation, improves relationship for shipper with key customer.
When one of its large clients, a producer of a variety of wood products including wood packaging material (WPM), contacted Timber Products Inspection Inc. (TP) about a problem with a shipment that had arrived in China, the staff at TP acted quickly to not only defuse the situation but actually helped their client to improve their relationship with one of their most important customers.
“Our client became aware of the issue when their customer received notification from a Chinese official that a crate from our client had tested positive for a nematode and had been quarantined for fumigation,” said Matt McGowan, TP’s WPM program manager. “The customer was very concerned that other orders from our client might have the same issue.”
The pine wood nematode (Bursaphelenchus xylophilis) was first identified in the United States in the late 1970s and has since been found in numerous Midwestern and Eastern states.
The nematodes get into wood by attaching themselves to longhorned beetles that bore into pine trees. The first symptom of the disease is a general wilt of needles, but as it progresses, the pine needles turn yellow and then brown, often followed by the death of the entire tree, sometimes within 30-90 days after the first symptoms appear.
“Basically, they eat into the inner part of the tree, and once the tree girdles, it dies,” said McGowan.
Customs in China and other countries will usually pick crates at random to sample to check that WPM is not infected with insects that could be potentially harmful if introduced in their countries’ environments.
“TP responded to the issue quickly, researching the situation and gathering additional information about the size and origin of the material that was in the affected crate,” said McGowan. “Once the material was identified, it was segregated at our client’s facility.”
The very next day, McGowan and a TP inspector arrived on site at their client’s production facility to take samples from the segregated wood. They first explained the process to their client and to their client’s concerned customer, and representatives from both observed as 20 samples were taken from differing packs of wood that included different lengths and sizes of lumber, including 1×4, 2×4, and 2×6, all of varying length. Samples were taken using a spade bit to drill into different areas of the lumber, with precautions taken to clean all tools, as well as hands, in between each sample withdrawal to prevent any potential cross-contamination.
“Our client’s customer was very pleased with our response time to the problem and how the sampling was performed, and they looked forward to hearing the results of the test,” said McGowan.
Samples were shipped overnight to a lab which tested for the presence of nematodes, and fortunately, all the samples came back negative, according to McGowan.
“TP’s quick response time to this issue helped our client retain one of their largest customers by quickly and efficiently dealing with an issue that could have potentially damaged their relationship or even terminated it,” said McGowan.
Although this problem was not the typical day-to-day issue that TP runs across, its inspectors and other employees are well trained in more than a dozen disciplines, well informed about updates in the wood products industry, and equipped to deal with such problems when they do occur, he said.
TP is an independent, third party, wood products inspection, testing, and consulting company with field representation in all 50 states. Its corporate office is located in Conyers, Georgia, and the company also has an additional facility in Vancouver, Washington.
It’s the largest agency in the United States for the monitoring of ISPM-15 enforcement.
For more information on TP, visit http://www.tpinspection.com/ or call 770-922-8000.
