May 22, 2002 -- The Danish printing house Aarhuus Stiftsbogtrykkerie has been licensed to label its printed matters with the FSC logo. Thus, the company is the first waterless offset printing house to offer FSC-labelled printed matters. With its FSC-certification, Aarhuus Stiftsbogtrykkerie has emphasised its position as the leading printing house within the environmental area. The label is customers’ guarantee that their printed matter has been printed on paper produced from wood from viable forestry operations. "We are now able to offer our customers FSC-labelled printed matter, based either on a waterless offset or heatset production. "We have always placed great emphasis on keeping our environmental efforts – and thus the environmental efforts of our customers – innovative and sought to ensure that they form a logical unity", says Mr. Uffe Hansen, Marketing Manager, Aarhuus Stiftsbogtrykkerie. "In 1996, we were the first printing house in Denmark to be given licence to the Nordic Swan label, and the year after we were awarded the environmental certification ISO 14001. Combined these two systems guarantee our customers that the environmental impact of their printed matter is kept to a minimum. We felt, however, that we needed to pay more attention to the paper production, and we therefore set our sights on obtaining FSC certification. In 2000, our subsidiary Stibo Graphic was the first heatset printing house in the world to be awarded FSC certification. With our waterless offset printing house included we have now obtained the desired overall unity" Uffe Hansen concludes. FSC is the abbreviation of Forest Stewardship Council, the purpose of which is to encourage forestry operations that are environmentally, socially responsible and financially viable. The FSC logo thus documents that the raw paper material used complies in full with the specified requirements. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is among the organisations supporting the FSC. To obtain FSC certification, both the supplier of the raw product and the printing house must be able to trace the paper up through the supply chain and thus guarantee that the raw material used complies with the specified requirements.