Global softwood fibre is in short supply, and New Zealand must act before the window to capitalise closes. That is the opening argument of the Wood Processors and Manufacturers Association of New Zealand (WPMA), whose 2026 election manifesto calls on all sides to pivot from raw log exports to high-value wood manufacturing across five interlocking fronts.
The manifesto was released by CEO Mark Ross on behalf of a supply chain that employs more than 38,000 people and generates over $5 billion in combined export and domestic sales each year. WPMA represents companies that convert harvested logs into sawn timber, pulp, panels, engineered wood, and emerging bio-forest products, and the document sets out a comprehensive policy agenda to secure both the fibre supply and the processing capacity needed to turn New Zealand’s timber wealth into higher-value products.
As it stands, up to 60 per cent of New Zealand’s harvest currently leaves the country as raw logs. WPMA argues the sector is forfeiting billions in unrealised value and leaving regional communities exposed to commodity price cycles beyond their control. Its primary demand is a national commitment to shifting that equation, backed by regulatory settings that incentivise long-term investment, support innovation, and accelerate the development of emerging forest bio-products — biofuels, biomaterials, and wood-based chemicals — as commercial pillars alongside sawn timber and engineered wood.
Imported timber controls sit alongside domestic processing reform as a complementary priority, with WPMA pressing for formal inspection procedures that require products entering the New Zealand market to meet the country’s performance, sustainability, and legality standards before crossing the border. The Association says the measure is essential to ensuring domestic processors are not undercut by imported material held to a lower bar.
On trade, WPMA is calling for policies that open new doors for high-value wood products, government backing for export-growth programmes including the Value-Added Wood Exports Growth Accelerator, and the removal of barriers that continue to constrain market growth for New Zealand’s processed wood products.
Ratification of the New Zealand–India Free Trade Agreement is listed as an explicit priority, a call with considerable commercial history behind it, given the Indian market’s volatility, where New Zealand radiata pine trade peaked at NZ$326 million in 2019 before collapsing to NZ$9.5 million in 2023 at the height of the methyl bromide dispute.
India has since recorded strong gains across wood product categories, with pulp exports more than doubling from $20 million to $45.6 million over the past two years. The trade agenda reflects a broader recognition within the sector that export diversification and market access reform are as critical to long-term viability as domestic processing investment.
The domestic infrastructure agenda covers road, rail, ports, and coastal shipping improvements to cut transport costs and bottlenecks, investment in regional processing hubs, and more consistent, workable environmental regulation for processors. WPMA is also calling for continuation and expansion of the accelerated depreciation settings introduced under the government’s Investment Boost tax policy, which the Association says is critical to driving new equipment and technology investment across the sector.
Energy security sits at the centre of WPMA’s infrastructure asks, with the Association pressing for long-term access to affordable fuel and power as an operational necessity rather than a policy aspiration, as Wood Central reported in its coverage of Ross’s direct advocacy to Energy Minister Simon Watts earlier this year. New Zealand Treasury’s medium-term forestry outlook identified high energy prices as the primary driver of the 2024 mill exits, with several remaining operations having signalled the possibility of halting production entirely.
In construction, WPMA is urging wood-option policies across public and private builds, government procurement criteria that recognise locally processed low-carbon timber products, and building code modernisation to remove the regulatory barriers that continue to slow mass timber adoption in mid-rise and commercial projects. The Association positions mass timber as both a climate and an earthquake-engineering solution, arguing it is a direct alternative to steel and concrete in precisely the building typologies where New Zealand’s code settings have historically favoured heavier materials.
On workforce, WPMA is calling for long-term vocational training and apprenticeship pathways developed in direct partnership with industry, immigration settings calibrated to address critical skill shortages, and sustained government collaboration to modernise workplace conditions across the sector. The breadth of the platform reflects an industry that sees the 2026 election as a pivotal moment across the full span of its operations, from forest gate to finished product.
New Zealand’s forestry export revenue reached NZ$6 billion in the year to March 2025 — 8.7 per cent of total merchandise exports and 1.6 per cent of GDP, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade — and WPMA’s argument to the next government is direct: a country with a sustainable fibre surplus, a proven manufacturing base, and a global market moving into shortage has no credible reason to keep sending raw logs offshore when the value, and the jobs, could stay at home.
