Australia’s hardwood chip exports have fallen 45 per cent from their 2018 peak of 6.8 million bone-dry metric tonnes, with shipments to Japan down 65 per cent and China-bound volumes off 33 per cent over the same period. That is according to new analysis from forest industry intelligence firm ResourceWise, which says the slide is structural — not a cyclical dip that exporters can wait out.
China’s own expansion is the primary driver.
That’s because mills scaled aggressively through the 2010s, overcapacity followed, and procurement turned inward — domestic chip supply has grown in parallel, eating into demand for imported material. Whilst the country’s paper industry has also shifted its procurement model, moving away from woodchip imports toward pulp, it has further narrowed the market for Australian products.
And prices have moved the same way. The average export price for Australian hardwood chips was five per cent below the prior year in the second half of 2025, with China-bound shipments down three per cent — a margin hit landing on top of already significant volume losses.
It comes as Wood Central reported that ABARES expects Australian hardwood woodchip exports to settle at similar volumes but lower unit prices, with Australia holding a smaller, more specialised role in the market — a trajectory the ResourceWise data now puts numbers to.
Southeast Asia is attracting producers looking beyond North Asian exposure. ResourceWise is measured on what that shift can deliver — competing supplier nations are targeting the same markets, and Vietnam alone now supplies close to 60 per cent of the hardwood woodchip trade across the Asia-Pacific. The volume on offer will not replace what China and Japan have pulled back.
- The full Market Insights report — Australia’s Wood Chip Exports at a Crossroads: Trade Shifts in the Asia-Pacific Fibre Market — is available via ResourceWise.
