What decides a timber clearance: the species, the cubic-metre measurement, and the quarantine sign-off.

A container of timber is rarely one product to customs, even when it is one line on the purchase order. A log, a sawn baulk and a sheet of plywood are three different tariff headings, and treating them as one because they came off the same ship is how a file stalls.

This page covers what actually decides that file: the form the wood arrives in, how the shipment is measured, and the plant quarantine step that runs alongside customs rather than after it.

Timber, unlike almost everything else that crosses these ports, is not assessed by weight. A shipment of logs or sawn wood is measured in cubic metres, and that measurement is taken again at the terminal rather than read off the invoice. When the terminal's figure comes in higher than the packing list, the assessment follows the terminal, not the paperwork the shipment travelled with — and that is the point in a timber file where declared quantity actually gets tested, ahead of any argument about classification or duty.

Before any of that, plant quarantine has to sign off. That function is changing hands: the National Agri-trade and Food Safety Authority was set up in 2025 to take over from the Department of Plant Protection, and the handover is meant to be finished by the end of October 2026. Until it is, a timber importer may be dealing with either name. The control itself has not changed. A consignment that has not been fumigated does not clear, whatever paperwork it arrives with from origin, and that step sits with quarantine rather than customs — an agent cannot move it along by asking twice.