Hardwood shipments from the United States into Australia and New Zealand have climbed 15 per cent by volume and 17 per cent by value in the five months to May, with 16,031 cubic metres of lumber crossing the Pacific despite the wider uncertainty in global timber trade. That is according to new export data from the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), which drew on data from the US Department of Agriculture.
“An enormous resource for the world,” is what Rod Wiles, AHEC’s Regional Director for Africa, the Middle East, India, and Oceania, called the American hardwood estate in a past interview with Wood Central, with the species plugging into major production cycles across furniture, construction, and boatbuilding. Wood Central understands that Red oak remains the biggest single species shipped into Australia, and New Zealand imports of the oak have jumped 79 per cent, a growth the council puts down to the species’ popularity spreading across the region.
Much of that oak is replacing timber Australia no longer harvests, with manufacturers choosing American species as a substitute for Victorian ash, since Victoria and Western Australia ended native harvesting from January 2024, leaving joinery, stair, and furniture supply chains short of local hardwood.
Australian Sustainable Hardwoods, the country’s largest hardwood manufacturer, has led that switch from its Heyfield mill, grading and packing the American species as Glacial Oak, its direct replacement for the Victorian ash it once sawed. By early 2024, the mill was bringing in 30 or more containers of American oak every month, and red oak imports climbed more than 1,531 per cent in a single quarter that year.
“The best solution for the vast majority of businesses in the ASH supply chain,” is how Managing Director Vince Hurley described Glacial Oak as the pivot began, with the blond, straight-grained boards matching the Victorian ash they replaced on price, colour, and supply.
Some of that oak is already standing in Glen Iris, with husband-and-wife team Nala Ryan of Nala Design and Joel Ryan of Orbis Constructions wrapping a pair of Denman Avenue townhouses in IronOak, the H3-treated Glacial Oak that ASH warrants for 25 years outdoors. Inside the homes, completed in 2025, the same American oak forms solid staircases, handrails, bespoke doorframes, and sculptural benchtop details.
“IronOak provided a new palette to explore,” Ryan said of the treated boards, which screen the facades for privacy and filtered light, line the outdoor entertaining room, and run as a feature ceiling through the lofted main void.
Structural work is following the joinery, with AHEC unveiling Vert, a greening pavilion framed in red oak glulam and thermally modified red oak, at the Chelsea College of Arts for the 2024 London Design Festival. The Diez Office-designed structure has since travelled to Bonn’s Bundeskunsthalle for the WEtransFORM exhibition.
Local producers are already pressing red oak into glulam, with the biggest mass timber makers in the Southern Hemisphere running the species through their laminating lines, work Wiles rates as ahead of Europe.
Premium species are carrying the value growth, with walnut shipments into Australia up 59 per cent and maple demand rising alongside, as furniture makers, joiners, and stair builders pay for consistent, verified-origin boards.
Manufacturers use oak across furniture, flooring, doors, architectural joinery, mouldings, and kitchen cabinets, with the porous, open structure absorbing oils and treatments so completely that the species also lends itself to thermal modification for outdoor use.
It comes as AHEC counted record American hardwood trade into India in 2025, with the value of lumber, logs, and veneers reaching $12.28 million and lumber volumes up 46 per cent. Indian buyers then pushed the trade a further 24 per cent higher in the first quarter of 2026.
Every consignment can now carry its own legality statement, with AHEC’s American Hardwood Assured platform generating proof of negligible deforestation risk since its April launch. Those statements meet due diligence rules under the EU Deforestation Regulation, the US Lacey Act, and Australia’s timber import laws.
