More and more plywood, panels, and laminated veneer lumber (LVL) are coming into Australia, with imports reaching $92 million in August, the third-highest month since records began in 1988. That is according to new trade data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics this morning, which shows sawn timber falling to $71 million for the month from $79 million a year earlier.
“We shouldn’t be afraid of those supply chains simply because they look different from the ones we have today,” according to Steve Walker, who revealed to Wood Central yesterday that China’s squeezed mills are chasing buyers in markets such as Australia. China supplied almost 80 per cent of the plywood Australia imported in the year to April, according to Forest and Wood Products Australia, with Indonesia a distant second on 6.8 per cent and Chile third on 3.4 per cent.
Robert Cairns, a director of the Australian Timber Importers Federation, said last month that LVL is now replacing solid timber in roof and wall battens, truss chords, studs, and plates, with most LVL formwork now coming from China. Mainland China supplied more than 69 per cent of the LVL Australia imported in the ten months to October 2025, according to Forest and Wood Products Australia, when volumes grew 63 per cent on a year earlier.
Until January 2023, the bureau had never recorded a month in which Australia spent more on imported plywood, veneers, and panels than on sawn timber, and the $21 million lead panels opened in August is the largest on record. That heading has counted LVL only since 2022, when LVL was split out of builders’ joinery, so part of the gain since then reflects LVL changing headings at the border.
The climb has been building for decades, with panel imports at $108 million in 1988, less than a quarter of the $483 million Australia spent on imported sawn timber. Over the past 15 years they have more than tripled to $981 million across 12 months, whilst sawn timber imports rose 38 per cent to $897 million.
Imported LVL has grown faster still, reaching 254,065 cubic metres in 2025-26 against 95,919 cubic metres in 2022-23, at a weighted average free-on-board price of $629 a cubic metre, the lowest in five years. Plywood imports crossed 500,000 cubic metres over 12 months for the first time in January, before reaching a record 544,156 cubic metres in the year to April.
As it stands, Australia’s wood and cork imports reached $258 million in August, the most for any August since 2022. It comes as Forest and Wood Products Australia found the value of wood imports rose markedly faster than the market in 2025-26, a year of relatively flat housing starts and growing competition from lightweight steel framing.
For Walker, a buyers’ market for wood products is “potentially good news” for Australian home buyers, with cheaper plywood, panels, and LVL able to cut what builders pay for timber framing and components. The real contest, he says, is no longer Australian timber against imported timber but “timber construction versus steel, concrete and other building systems.”
