Up to 68% of Australia’s Engineered Wood Imports Carry Elevated Risk
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Exclusive: Australia has gone from selling engineered wood abroad in the early 2000s to importing two million cubic metres a year, with China supplying 43 per cent of the volume.
Rows of veneer dry in the open at a factory in Guangxi province, one of the Chinese processing provinces the analysis models product by product to find where the fibre in Australia's engineered wood imports was cut. (Photo Credit: Alamy Stock Photo, image 2FK5CAM)
Engineered wood products now make up 30 per cent of Australia’s solid wood imports by volume, second only to sawn softwood, while the country manufactures no more of them than it did in 2002 and 68 per cent of the imported volume comes from nations at elevated risk of illegal harvesting. That is according to Dr Tyron Venn, the University of Queensland resource economist who posted the full 133 pages of his federally funded analysis on Wednesday, with co-authors Zuhui Huang and Jaanvi Lachhwani modelling the category province by province from Chinese customs statistics.
Domestic plants could still cover the whole of national demand in the early 2000s, and by 2016-17 domestic production covered 77 per cent of what the country consumed in the category, the report’s measure of potential sovereign capacity. Imports across that same stretch climbed from 1.5 million cubic metres of roundwood equivalent in 2016-17 to 2.0 million in 2022-23, with Australia’s rolling plywood imports crossing 500,000 cubic metres for the first time early this year on the separate ABS product series.
“EWP manufacture has not expanded in response to falling native forest production,” the analysis finds, of two decades in which particleboard, medium density fibreboard, and plywood output came back to its 2002-03 mark of 2 million cubic metres of product. Australian plants draw more than 95 per cent of their fibre from softwood, with particleboard and MDF alone accounting for 90 per cent of national production.
A worker steadies a panel below the daylights of a board press, the manufacturing step behind particleboard and MDF, the two products that account for 90 per cent of Australia’s own engineered wood production. (Photo Credit: Alamy Stock Photo, image 2T2R3RR)
Elevated risk describes a banding rather than a finding of illegality, drawing every nation below the top tier of Forest Trends’ Global Illegal Logging and Associated Trade Risk Data Tool into a single group whose supply chains a desk check cannot clear. That band covers 68 per cent of Australia’s engineered wood import volume, with China supplying 43 per cent of the category on its own.
New Zealand, North America, and Western Europe together hold 32 per cent of the category, the only low-risk share left inside it, while Malaysia at 8 per cent and Indonesia at 6 per cent lead the tropical suppliers. Brazil and a group of other tropical developing nations take 3 per cent apiece, with Romania on 2 per cent and Thailand, Vietnam, and Russia each holding 1 per cent.
Origin shares inside Australia’s engineered wood product imports over 2018-19 to 2022-23, with New Zealand, North America, and Western Europe the only low-risk supply left in the category. (Table: Wood Central, from Venn, Huang and Lachhwani)Origin shares inside Australia’s engineered wood product imports over 2018-19 to 2022-23, with New Zealand, North America, and Western Europe the only low-risk supply left in the category. (Table: Wood Central, from Venn, Huang and Lachhwani)
China’s own mills took an average 115.9 million cubic metres of imported wood a year across the six years to 2023, and 61.3 per cent of that intake came from elevated-risk origins, with Russia alone accounting for 29.6 per cent. Of the 1.79 million cubic metres of Australian-bound product manufactured there each year, 43.9 per cent carried the banding, a lower share than the China average because Australian orders come from provinces with less exposure.
“Resource aggregator and global processing hub,” the authors write of China’s place in the trade, where export manufacturers work from imported feedstock the report describes as mixed during production with limited traceability. The authors could read a wood type off just 33 per cent of the volume reaching Australia, with a further 32 per cent labelled hardwood without saying which kind and the remaining 35 per cent saying nothing at all.
Venn’s team matched each product to the feedstock it could physically have been made from, on the logic that decking comes from logs or sawn timber while furniture can absorb logs, sawn wood, veneer, or engineered inputs. Wooden furniture carried 70 per cent of the volume that named no wood type at all.
Russian fibre reaches Australia on both routes, with 192,300 cubic metres moving directly and a further 122,500 travelling through Chinese mills each year, across a window in which bilateral sanctions only began in 2022. Australian regulators already know the route, with forensic testing released under freedom of information returning results inconsistent with claimed provenance or taxonomy for 37 of 74 sampled imported products.
“Tariffs do work, but these sanctions have not worked,” Engineered Wood Products Association of Australasia chief executive Gavin Matthew told a Senate inquiry in June, where the sector put up to 6 per cent of the nation’s timber imports at high risk of carrying Russian fibre. One manufacturer had already cut its workforce from 1,200 to 950 and closed two mills, Matthew said, with neither plant likely to reopen.
Across everything China ships to Australia, 27.4 per cent is tropical hardwood and a further 17.5 per cent temperate hardwood, a mix richer in hardwood than China’s own import intake. Replacing that volume from Australian plants would mean processing wood types the domestic industry, running at more than 95 per cent softwood, does not handle at scale.
“Investments in plant and equipment for the manufacture of engineered wood products,” runs the tenth of eleven recommendations, asking the Commonwealth to help the existing hardwood plantation estate feed a domestic engineered wood industry. Australia sits five to 10 years from any gain in sovereign capacity on that path, with native forest silviculture running 10 to 20 years and new hardwood plantations 30 or more.
Sawn softwood alone escaped the shift, with 95 per cent of the category still supplied by New Zealand, North America, and Western Europe, though 81.8 per cent of its modest growth since 2000-01 came from elevated-risk nations, principally Russia and Romania. Every other solid wood line grew on the same supply, with elevated-risk nations providing 86.8 per cent of the increase.
Sawn softwood held its volume and low-risk profile across two decades, while every other solid wood import line climbed amid elevated-risk supply. (Image Credit: Venn, Huang and Lachhwani, An Analysis of Australia’s Solid Wood Timber Production and Imports)
Certified wood offers no way out either, the authors find, with the global certified pool finite, so each additional certified container bound for Australia leaves the uncertified volume to another buyer rather than shrinking it. Venn’s wider modelling shows that 81 per cent of the native forest harvest Australia gave up was straight back imported into the country.
Plantation feedstock grew substantially across those same decades, while domestic engineered wood manufacture did not expand, the report finds, with pulp log volumes going into panels running between 0.96 and 1.58 million cubic metres a year and showing no trend either way. Australia grew the fibre and did not build the plants.
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