Japan Has Cedar and Cypress in Abundance and Is Now Courting Australia
Australia buys just $38 million of timber a year from Japan, but that could soon change with a new push to bring more highly desirable Japanese species into the Australian marketplace.
Hisao Yamada, chairman of the Japan Wood-Products Export Association, told the Melbourne seminar the association plans to strength-test Japanese cedar and cypress to Australian Standards for structural use. (Photo Credit: Wood Central / Central PR Group for one time use)
Decades of post-war planting have left Japan with more mature cedar and cypress than its own builders want, making the timber an ideal product for new markets like Australia. That is according to Hisao Yamada, chairman of the Japan Wood-Products Export Association, who told a seminar in Melbourne on Monday that more than half of Japan’s planted forests are now older than 50 years.
“You have to be able to give comfort to Australian code officials that the product is suitable,” Andrew Dunn, chief executive of the Timber Development Association, told the exporters. Dunn said the National Construction Code requires building products to be backed by evidence that they are fit for purpose, from certification and test reports to sign-off by a professional engineer.
Australian law treats the importer as the manufacturer for warranty purposes, according to Dunn, who warned that “the first purchaser in the country in Australia is the one held responsible, not you”. He said a durability claim not measured under Australia’s own system would be considered misleading, and urged suppliers to research the market before they ship.
Presenters and guests at the Seminar on the Export of Japanese Wood Products to Australia at T3 Collingwood on Monday, presented by the Japan Wood-Products Export Association and the Japan International Forestry Promotion and Cooperation Center and organised by Wood Central. (Photo Credit: Wood Central / Central PR Group)
Dunn says Australia buys nearly $7 billion of timber a year from 68 countries, with Japan 26th on that list at $38 million a year, mostly paper. It comes weeks after a Japanese-owned company became Australia’s largest home building group, topping the Housing Industry Association’s annual ranking with 8,038 starts.
Japanese cedar is “an excellent choice” for cladding and interior joinery, Dunn told one questioner, citing the high cost of western red cedar from Canada, “a very similar species”. He warned that cladding must also meet Australia’s bushfire requirements, with fire performance here tested using methods that differ from those elsewhere in the world.
Foresters work aloft in a planted conifer stand, the tending Japan’s new Basic Plan needs at scale if domestic wood use is to reach 42 million cubic metres by 2035. (Photo Credit: Japan Forest Agency)
Sato said Japan does not yet rely on new markets, but a shrinking population will cut demand at home, which is why he joined the trip to Australia. Higo Mokuzai sits on Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost main island, where Sato said log production reached 4 million cubic metres last year.
Whilst Dunn set out the rules, four Japanese companies made their pitch to the room, starting with Higo Mokuzai, a log and timber market in Kumamoto. Its president, Keiichiro Sato, said the company handles 200,000 cubic metres of logs a year, 80 per cent of them sugi cedar.
“We can show you the exact mountain, the exact forest that the tree is coming from,” said Anton Kabanov of OI Innovation, a sawmill equipment maker near Tokyo that began exporting timber in 2024. The company has since shipped to eight countries, using its sawmill customers across Japan to fill smaller, higher-value orders rather than container loads every week.
Logs with marked ends laid out at a timber yard in Japan, which shipped 1.912 million cubic metres of logs last year for 29.8 billion yen. (Photo Credit: Supplied)
OI Innovation manages export paperwork and shipping in Japan, whilst partners including Japanese Timber Australia, led by director Simon Love, handle the import end. Kabanov said the group has worked this way for more than two years, and urged buyers to use it rather than set up their own trade with a Japanese sawmill.
Akasho Sangyo says it prioritises value over volume, with the manufacturer near Nara Prefecture’s Yoshino forestry region gluing sugi and hinoki into W Block sections up to 530 by 750 millimetres and up to 6 metres long. The company produces 36,000 cubic metres a year, cutting the blocks down into large entrance beams as well as small rafters and wall posts.
“I know Sugi and Hinoki are not familiar with the Australian market. So it is not easy to expand the business here in Australia,” said Yusuke Hisadomi, Akasho Sangyo’s sales development manager. He said the challenge could create “a new relationship and a new business”, and invited the room to send him ideas after the session.
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