That is according to prefabAUS executive chair Damien Crough, who spoke at Offsite25, From Factory to Future, on the Gold Coast last year.

But the turnaround was not accidental. At the 2024 meeting, prefabAUS leadership acknowledged they were “frankly downbeat” about progress — Modern Methods of Construction remained absent from major national programs despite offering clear solutions to Australia’s housing crisis. But the organisation declared it “a fight we simply must win” and launched a systematic campaign to elevate Smart Building to national priority status.

It worked.

Federal commitments now include $54 million specifically for MMC development, $49.3 million to support state and territory prefab and modular programs, and $4.7 million for a voluntary national certification process. Those allocations follow the November $900 million National Productivity Fund and an additional $120 million in targeted competition payments to accelerate prefabrication adoption.

Industry Development Specialist Lance Worrall said the formal recognition marks a decisive break from the past: “Smart Building is now explicitly recognised within the National Housing Accord, and in the Future Made in Australia industry programs,” he said, adding that the 2025 election outcome had allowed governments to act with greater urgency on housing and manufacturing.

Regulatory changes are now underway.

The Australian Building Codes Board has introduced new national standards for offsite construction — covering design, approvals, production and performance — alongside a manufacturer certification framework. Industry analysis estimates the framework could deliver between $2.9 billion and $5.7 billion in economic benefits.

Meanwhile, the state governments have followed with hard targets.

Queensland has set a 50 per cent MMC target for government projects, with a dedicated MMC sub-group now embedded within its Building Ministerial Advisory Council ahead of the 2032 Olympics. New South Wales launched a $10 million modular housing pilot with pattern-book fast approvals. Victoria committed $50 million to a Future of Housing Centre of Excellence. Western Australia allocated $50 million to its Housing Innovation Program. South Australia and Tasmania each established dedicated MMC social housing initiatives.

And financial investment is shifting, too. Commonwealth Bank now offers prefab-specific lending products enabling access to up to 80 per cent of the contract price before home installation — directly addressing cash flow and procurement barriers for manufacturers and developers. A Federal Treasury working group is separately reviewing the remaining financing obstacles to scaling factory-based production.

PrefabAUS says the momentum reflects a deliberate ten-year campaign. Crough pointed to the organisation’s “Building the Future We Want” roadmap — federal recognition enabling state programs that create demand for innovation hubs, which in turn grow manufacturing capacity and workforce skills. It comes as Wood Central reported on THE PRECINCT, a new model using Australian timber to make prefab viable at scale.

The contest, industry leaders say, is no longer whether MMC will reshape Australian housing. It is whether the sector can scale fast enough to keep production onshore. “The future for Australian Smart Building is a future built here, manufactured here,” Worrall said. “We will not have a Smart Building future unless it is A Future Built in Australia.”

That is according to the latest ABARES Agricultural Commodities Report, published yesterday, which revealed that the gross value of forestry (GVP) production is expected to reach $2.23 billion in 2026-27 — a 3 per cent nominal increase or a 1 per cent real increase. And over the medium term, the GVP is projected to drop back $2.1 billion, with no material growth expected until at least 2030-31.

By the numbers, total gross value production in forests has dropped by 36 per cent over the past eight years — from about $3.4 billion in 2017-18 — with softwood relatively steady at about $1.5 billion, hardwood plantations flatlining at $0.5 billion and native forest continuing what is now a 20-year decline.

According to Diana Hallam, CEO of the Australian Forest Products Association, whilst the topline figures point to the vital role of sustainable forestry in producing essential products, the report also identified serious challenges and headwinds for the sector.

“Some of these challenges and risks include high manufacturing and energy costs, greater use of structural steel in residential and mid-rise construction, as well as a growing amount of imported timber products of varying quality flooding the Australian marketplace, including from China,” she said.

Hallam said the new estimates also reaffirmed the importance of aligning the government’s policy with Australia’s Timber Fibre Strategy, which outlines opportunities for the industry to make a greater contribution to national goals in carbon, innovation, and housing construction.

Softwood up, hardwood down, native at historic lows

The value of softwood plantation production is forecast to increase slightly in 2026-27, driven by short-term movements in detached housing demand. But ABARES warns that a gradual shift toward higher-density dwellings is expected to temper timber demand over the medium term, whilst projected increases in softwood log availability will ease unit prices.

Hardwood plantation production, however, is heading the other way.

And that’s because ongoing shifts in global paper markets are placing downward pressure on woodchip demand, whilst Vietnam’s growing share of global trade — combined with projected exchange rate changes — is continuing to erode Australia’s competitiveness overseas. 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.

And then there is native forestry, where production has now fallen to historically low levels following 20 years of contraction driven by the transfer of multiple-use public native forests to nature conservation reserves and increased harvest restrictions.

A $570 million downward revision

ABARES has slashed its forestry forecast by more than $570 million — a 21 per cent revision from its December report — with exports the major driver of the writedown, down more than $619 million amid weaker production and prices.

It comes days after this masthead reported on a new white paper from the Rozetta Institute arguing that Australia needs a national roadmap to boost forest productivity and encourage new capital into the market.

On Friday, Wood Central spoke to the white paper’s lead author, Steve Walker, Principal of Terrafolia Advisory, and co-author Dr Lyndall Bull, who revealed that Australian plantations produce just 15 to 18 cubic metres per hectare per year against international benchmarks of 30 to 50.

And on Monday, Walker went further, telling Wood Central the sector’s decades-long focus on cost discipline had come at the expense of genuine value creation. “Lifting productivity on the land already planted is the fastest and most scalable opportunity,” Walker said. “International benchmarks in Brazil, India, Vietnam and China demonstrate that 30 to 50 cubic metres per hectare per year is achievable using proven technologies already available.”

“If we can do this, we can ultimately strengthen our capacity to produce more competitive engineered wood products like LVL and other EWPs,” he said, adding that the downstream benefits could add tens of millions of dollars to regional communities.

• For more information, including the ABARES full March 2026 Agricultural Commodities Report, visit the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences.

Now, Australian Sustainable Hardwoods (ASH) — the country’s largest hardwood processor — says a $600,000 AFWI-funded research project is helping the industry find its way forward, with new species, new engineered products and new performance data that could change how timber windows are specified in Australia.

Daniel Wright, ASH’s National Business Development Manager, told Wood Central that window manufacturers are a big part of the company’s supply chain — from commodity and painted windows through to high-end architectural manufacturers — mostly across south-eastern states, but with a growing presence in northern New South Wales.

And Wright said the fallout from the decision to cease harvesting in Victorian forests has been immediate. “The window manufacturers of south-east Australia have been forced into a lot of change with the cessation of native timber in Victoria — just like we have,” he said. “But they also have upcoming changes to the NCC, which will structurally change how many of them operate.”

“Of course, what impacts our supply chain also impacts us.”

That disruption created confusion. “We’ve recently seen imported plantation timbers in the window market that don’t meet the specs they are intended for,” Wright said. “This was a direct result of Victoria’s hardwood being suddenly ceased. The window makers were trying to do the right thing, but were forced to make quick decisions.”

As one of the major stakeholders in the AFWI–AGWA Modernising Timber Windows project, led jointly by the Timber Development Association and the Australian Glass and Window Association, Australian Sustainable Hardwoods is providing timber species for testing their performance in modern systems.

“When we were asked to be involved, we saw this project as an opportunity to work together and help the window makers collectively find pathways forward that not only suit their specific needs, but also comply with upcoming changes to the NCC,” Wright said.

The project is also a chance for ASH to advance one of its newer species — Plantation Oak — as the company rebuilds markets lost when Victorian ash was taken away. Made from Shining Gum logs grown in a plantation for pulp, Plantation Oak is upgraded by ASH into higher-end, longer-term applications. Wright said a small part of every log can be used for architectural applications, but the majority needs to be engineered to get the best out of it.

“We’ve had success with Plantation Oak in MASSLAM, but in order to use this fibre in other market segments, we need to help build the standards and examples that everyone can follow with confidence,” he said. ASH is one of 10 timber suppliers involved in the project, alongside the Pentarch Group and others.

Now, the testing programme is about to shift up a gear.

Speaking to Wood Central today, Kylan Low — the Structural Engineer at the Timber Development Association leading the project — said next week’s round will put four configurations through their paces: a double-hung window, an awning and casement window, an awning and double casement window, and a centre bifold door. Low said the configurations are designed to capture various hardware setups used across the industry and will be tested under combined air and water pressure for durations representing storm periods.

In January, Low told Wood Central that the industry had been craving this kind of data for a very long time: “Window data hasn’t kept up with changes in codes, glazing, and timber supply.”

The project has also given a platform to the next generation. Jesse Ross — a Graduate Engineer at AGWA who has been working alongside Low since the project’s inception — recently shared his reflections on what has become his first major engineering project. Ross said that, unlike uPVC and aluminium systems, there was no prime operator in the timber window sector, meaning the entire system had to be built from the ground up.

Early testing revealed that some Australian hardwoods, such as Spotted Gum and Blackbutt, could outperform European staples. But given the project’s focus on species substitution, the team chose to work with the lowest passing species it could find. Designs have settled on 55/58 mm sash profiles with 24 mm glazing pockets, accommodating modern insulated glass units and manufacturable by small-scale workshops.

Ross said the industry engagement phase — travelling to state forums, meeting joiners, hardware suppliers and timber providers — was one of the most eye-opening parts of the experience. He found some joineries still working with outdated designs that didn’t fully comply with AS 2047 or accommodate drained insulated glass units.

“I learned that innovation is not just about creating new ideas,” Ross wrote, “but also about making them accessible to your audience.” The documentation phase — technical manuals, substitution procedures, shop drawings — is now underway, aiming to give any Australian joinery everything it needs to start building with confidence.”

The Modernising Timber Windows project is one of 30 research initiatives funded through AFWI — a $200-million-plus institute backed by $100 million in Commonwealth funding. It is generating new structural and performance data across a range of solid and engineered wood products, testing how timbers perform under AS 2047, Australia’s mandatory standard for windows and external glazed doors.

• To learn more about the Australian Forest and Wood Innovations programme, visit AFWI’s dedicated website.

That is, according to new ABS data analysed by IndustryEdge, which revealed that Australia’s imports of prefabricated and modular buildings have lifted to a record $326.4 million for the year to November 2025, a staggering 51.1% uptake on the last 12 months with modular steel ($75.8 million, up 246.8%) and prefabricated steel and other non-wood products ($227.3 million, up 28.9%) making up more than 92% of imports.

The data comes amid growing public and political interest in prefabricated and modular construction as a potential lever for addressing Australia’s housing supply shortfall. Yesterday, Wood Central reported that a major Australian developer is now partnering with a major Chinese construction firm to bring prefab expertise to address Sydney’s housing crisis, whilst the AustChina Institute is looking to establish a trade corridor for prefab to help close the gap.

But how much of these building materials are going into housing?

The ABS data paints a more nuanced picture of what is actually arriving at ports. The figures do not distinguish between industrial and commercial buildings and dwellings, making it difficult to determine how much of the record growth is being driven by residential demand. The formal product descriptors are published on the Border Force website under the 9406 Prefabricated Buildings classifications, with longer versions contained in the monthly ABS data series.

A closer look at the largest import category — 9406.90.00.04, covering steel and other non-wood prefabricated buildings — tells the story.

At $227.3 million, it accounts for nearly 70% of the total, and it is made up almost entirely of commercial and industrial products. The category contains no information on the value of dwelling imports. What it does list is cold rooms, spray booths, operating theatres, carports, greenhouses, interpreter booths, pod offices, observatory domes, vaults, laundries, showers, kitchens, bathrooms, and workshops — a long way from the housing conversation that has dominated the prefab narrative in recent months.

Wooden prefab buildings make up just 7.1% of all imports by value

Inevitably, most interest in the timber sector will centre on imports of prefabricated wooden buildings. The value here lifted $5.5 million, or 31.0%, to $23.3 million (FOB) over the year to November 2025. It’s a strong growth rate off a modest base — wooden prefab buildings still account for just 7.1% of total prefabricated building imports by value. Imports are spread across the states, reasonably consistent with population size.

On the supply side, mainland China accounted for 66.1% of total prefabricated building imports, or $215.9 million (FOB), for the year to November 2025. The picture shifts when specifically isolating the wooden prefab. China supplied 43.0% of imported wooden prefabricated buildings by value, with Estonia contributing 20.7% and Latvia 9.5% — a reflection of the Baltic states’ established expertise in timber construction and their growing footprint in the Australian market.

That Baltic connection is also worth watching. European timber producers have been actively diversifying their export markets since EU sanctions on Russian and Belarusian timber disrupted established supply chains from 2022. As Wood Central has reported, the reshaping of global timber trade flows has opened new corridors — and Australia’s wooden prefab import profile increasingly appears to reflect that shift.

There is no question that political and commercial interest in prefab housing is growing. But the import data suggests the reality has not yet caught up with the ambition. The bulk of Australia’s record $326.4 million in prefab imports is going into commercial and industrial applications, and for the timber sector, wooden prefab remains a small but growing corner of the market at $23.3 million a year.

The gap between where the conversation is and where the numbers are remains significant.

The review, announced by the International Trade Administration as part of a broader initiation notice covering multiple trade orders, names Hunchun Xingjia Wooden Flooring Inc. and Zhejiang Longsen Lumbering Co., Ltd. as companies subject to examination.

Under the agency’s process, respondent selection may be limited to a subset of firms, determined either from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) import data or from quantity‑and‑value questionnaires issued to exporters. The CBP data or questionnaire responses will be placed on the record within 5 days of the notice’s publication, and the Commerce Department aims to select respondents within 35 days. Interested parties will have seven days to comment once the data are posted, followed by a five‑day window for rebuttal submissions.

The Department also noted that reviews may be rescinded where there are no suspended entries for a company or where entries were not made under the firm’s specific case number. Producers or exporters listed in the initiation notice may notify Commerce within 30 days if they had no exports, sales, or entries during the period of review. In addition, parties that requested a review may withdraw their request within 90 days of publication.

Wood Central understands that the latest acquisition strengthens its position in the US single‑family housing market — now responsible for 60 per cent of its recurring income in the United States — while giving it long‑sought access to California and Nevada after earlier expansions in Texas and the southeast.

And with Japan facing a glut of vacant single‑family homes, the move marks a major step toward Sumitomo Forestry’s goal of supplying 23,000 US homes annually by 2030, according to Toshio Mitsuyoshi, CEO and President of Sumitomo Forestry, the parent company that controls Sumitomo’s global interests.

“Tri Pointe Homes shares our focus on quality, customer experience and a culture that empowers local operating teams,” Mitsuyoshi said. “Through the acquisition, we expect to further enhance our profitability by leveraging the complementary strengths of Tri Pointe Homes and each of the five homebuilders within our group.”

Founded in 2009, Tri Pointe has built more than 58,000 single-family homes, including 6,400 in 2024, and operates 150 active communities across 13 states. The NYSE‑listed builder is known for its “move‑up” product, with an average selling price of $680,000, one of the highest in the US public homebuilding sector.

Under the deal, shareholders will receive $47 per share in cash, a 42 per cent premium to the 90‑day VWAP and above the company’s all‑time closing high. The boards of both companies have unanimously approved the merger, with closing expected in Q2 2026, pending shareholder and regulatory approval.

“Partnering with Sumitomo Forestry is a natural evolution in Tri Pointe Homes’ growth and reflects the strengths of our differentiated business strategy, premium brand and design‑driven approach,” said CEO Doug Bauer. “This transaction delivers compelling cash value for our stockholders while accelerating our long‑term growth strategy as an independent brand within a scaled, multi‑faceted platform.”

Crucially, the deal positions Sumitomo Forestry ahead of rival Sekisui House, which bought MDC Holdings for $4.95 billion in 2024. It also builds on Sumitomo’s growing US multifamily presence, including joint ventures with Hines and Fairfield Residential, as well as its 90 per cent stake in Texas‑based developer JPI Group.

In recent years, Sumitomo Forestry has expanded its interest in the US and Australian housing markets – both considered major growth markets – with Wood Central last year revealing that Sumitomo Forestry now owns more than 18% of housing starts from Australia’s top 20 builders.

That is according to Deeside Timberframe, a Scottish offsite timber manufacturer that is now building 300 timber-framed houses and bungalows in North Yorkshire, Cumbria, and Sunderland.

“Developers are under more pressure than ever to deliver homes quickly, efficiently and to a consistent standard,” according to Derek Wann, Deeside Timberframe’s business development director. “What we’re seeing now is a clear preference for timber frame partners who already understand how to deliver at scale. These are live residential developments where programme certainty underpins every commercial decision.”

In recent months, timber-frame has gained favour with UK homebuilders, as a shortage of skilled labour and a push toward modern methods of construction and environmentally sustainable materials has seen developers push to return timber-frame numbers to levels not seen since the 1970’s, using state-of-the-art robotics and factory-led assembly to drive a new wave of homes built using English timbers.

Now, more than one in three of the UK’s top homebuilders has a time frame facility, and according to Graeme Guy, national sales manager, truss and frame businesses are being engaged far earlier in the development process. “Developers want partners who can support them strategically, not just supply panels,” he said. “They’re looking for manufacturing capability, technical assurance and the confidence that delivery can be maintained across multiple sites.”

It comes as Wood Central last month revealed that Bellway Homes, one of the United Kingdom’s fastest-growing home builders, plans to more than double the share of timber homes it builds, from 12% to 30%, over the next five years. To achieve this, it opened Bellway Home Space, a state-of-the-art timber factory in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, late last month.

• To learn more about timber frame construction and the push to embrace “industrialised timber”, click here for Wood Central’s special feature.

And the squeeze is most acute in single‑family construction, which leans on timber systems for 93 per cent of new homes, where a combination of restrictive zoning, limited land availability and labour shortages has created bottlenecks and pushed vacancy rates to levels not seen in decades.

In the country’s tightest markets, the lack of available housing has led cities to operate with vacancy rates so low that even modest population growth puts immediate pressure on supply. Several California metropolitan areas, for example, including San Jose, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and Los Angeles, have spent most of the past 20 years with vacancy rates below 4 per cent. Whilst in Chicago, officials say they need 40,000 more units to meet parity, with an additional 20,000 dwellings also needed in New York City and Philadelphia.

Can the “smarter use” of industrialised wood short-circuit the crisis?

Last month, Gary Fleisher, a U.S. based modular housing expert, said that prefab could help close the gap if builders were prepared to increase their share of factory‑built homes from less than 3 per cent to 15-25 per cent. To do this, Fleisher said, the value chain would need to accept that housing (and wood) is an industrial product. “That would be transformational,” he said. “Not Swedish‑level (which is more than 85 per cent), but meaningful, profitable, and scalable.”

“If you want to understand Sweden’s success, follow the trees,” Fleisher said, stressing that the Swedes invested heavily in engineered wood systems and precision manufacturing decades before most U.S. builders had even heard the term “panelization.”

“Small single-family homes (can’t) be treated as custom projects,” he said. “They must be treated as products with options, much closer to manufactured housing thinking than American stick-built tradition—except executed at a much higher architectural and energy-performance level.”

“This matters because factories thrive on repeatability, not heroics.”

• To learn more about the push to embrace ‘industrialised’ home building, click here for Gary Fleisher’s article on Sweden’s modular housing industry.

As it stands, more than 78% of lumber imports now arrive at Chinese ports via Russia (which accounts for 70% of all imports) and Belarus, with China’s increasing reliance on both countries (post‑Ukraine sanctions) coinciding with a drop‑off in imports coming from Canada and Sweden.

Wood Central understands that the drop‑off is due to a persistently weak housing market – the main driver of softwood imports, with housing starts down 64% from their 10‑year average, with the Economist warning that China’s property crisis could drag on into 2030. “Given the slower pace of construction, fewer properties are coming onto the market,” it reported last month. “In 2022, new‑home sales made up just over half of all transactions. That figure tumbled to just 26% in 2024 and continued to fall in 2025 across a sample of large cities.”

Last month, Wood Central reported that British Columbia was now targeting China for mass timber imports in the wake of U.S. tariffs on Canadian lumber. “(Chinese construction) is shifting away from mass production into moments when demand for different types of building structures is growing,” according to Julie Lu, a University of British Columbia political ecologist and China scholar.

“Past years of work on opening regulations to wood‑frame construction have allowed for that. Plus, we have these new engineered wood technologies that allow for building larger buildings, like what we see in China with wood construction. So, I think there is a great possibility (for opportunity).”

That is according to the South Australian Forest Products Association (SAFPA), which today published its 2026 State Election Policy Platform, Protecting South Australia’s Sovereign Timber Capability, alongside a new policy paper outlining the immediate actions needed to protect domestic timber manufacturing.

“South Australia is proudly the birthplace of Australia’s plantation forestry industry, and for 150 years, regional South Australians have grown, harvested and manufactured timber that has helped build this State,” according to Nathan Paine, CEO of the SAFPA. “The forest industries contribute nearly $3 billion to the State’s economy each year and directly and indirectly support more than 21,000 jobs.”

Paine said the new platform builds on SAFPA’s 2021 agenda and focuses on expanding the plantation estate, strengthening local manufacturing and ensuring the sector continues to support housing supply, employment, food supply chains and decarbonisation.

The release follows the opening of two new state‑of‑the‑art Technical Colleges — one at Tonsley and the other at Mount Gambier — both constructed using locally manufactured NeXTimber by Timberlink cross‑laminated timber and Australian Sustainable Hardwoods glue-laminated timber. And calls for stronger sovereign capacity come as Premier Malinauskas and Anthony Albanese agreed on a new federal–state agreement that will see 17,000 new homes built across the state, including 7,000 for first‑home buyers, on a scale of development.

Paine said stronger procurement policies would help ensure public investment continues to support South Australian manufacturing. “This is not about protectionism, it’s about ensuring South Australia retains the sovereign capability to grow, process and manufacture one of its most essential renewable materials.”

New community research commissioned by SAFPA shows strong public support for protecting critical industries and ensuring South Australia grows enough plantation timber to meet future housing needs. Nearly half of voters said they were more likely to support candidates who back policies to secure the local timber supply, while polling in Mount Gambier confirmed firm regional backing for sovereign timber manufacturing and local jobs.