Callens

Callens African Woods is a Belgian producer and importer of African tropical timber, also managing forest concessions in Cameroon. Founded in 1920 in Izegem, shortly after the First World War, the family business was taken over in 1946 by a family of shareholders, then led by Christian Maelfait from the 1970s and by his son Thierry Maelfait from 1990. A third generation, Sam Maelfait, joined the management in 2021. Based since 2011 in Rekkem, in West Flanders, it established itself in Cameroon in the late 1990s, an activity structured since 2022 via its subsidiary Callens Cameroun. The company controls the entire chain, from the Cameroonian forest to delivery to the end customer. At its site near Yaound0e9, which employs around 150 people, the timber is sawn and pre-dried in sixteen kilns fueled by wood waste, before being shipped from Douala or Kribi to Antwerp. In Rekkem, more than 25,000 m³ of timber is stored under cover and processed (sawing, planing, cutting to length, finishing). The range covers more than thirty African species, including padouk, azob0e9, iroko, okan, bilinga, tali, sapelli, sipo and kossipo, in the form of sawn timber, cladding and planed profiles, with made-to-measure and packaging solutions. Callens African Woods sources from approved forest concessions and places its activity within a sustainable forest policy. The company offers, where possible, FSC-certified timber (WB-COC-001740) or OLB, and states that it complies with the European EUDR regulation.