Shipping Furniture From China to Australia

Twenty to twenty-seven days port to port in a full container from Shenzhen or Guangzhou to Melbourne, Port Botany or Brisbane, and twenty-one to thirty-one days as an LCL consignment. Add two to four weeks of production and consolidation before the sailing, and one to two weeks for customs, biosecurity and a delivery booking at the other end. Door to door, a typical order runs fourteen to sixteen weeks from deposit.

Usually not. Chinese-origin furniture enters Australia at 0% duty under the China–Australia Free Trade Agreement, provided a valid Certificate of Origin travels with the shipment. Without that certificate the general rate of 5% applies. GST of 10% is charged separately on the customs value plus duty, freight and insurance, and is claimable by a GST-registered business.

ISPM 15 is the international standard for treating solid wood packaging so it cannot carry pests. Any timber packing over 6 mm — crates, pallets, bracing — must be heat-treated or fumigated and stamped with the IPPC mark. Australian biosecurity is among the strictest in the world: one untreated pallet can have the container held, fumigated at your cost and delayed a week or two. All timber on our shipments is treated and marked before loading, and the certificate travels with the documents.

Below about 15 m³, LCL. Above it, a 20 ft container is usually cheaper per cubic metre and always safer for stone and solid timber, because nothing is handled loose alongside another shipper's cargo. The trap in LCL quotes is that the per-cubic-metre ocean rate looks small while the fixed destination charges — terminal handling, deconsolidation and the customs entry — apply whether you ship 3 m³ or 12 m³.

Yes, and we scope it before the ship sails. On our Melbourne delivery the container could not reach the house, so it was worked in the street and transferred to a box truck; on a two-storey job near Sydney a three-person crew carried slab pieces up the staircase. Carry-in, stairs, assembly and packaging removal are written into the quotation — a standard freight quote stops at the kerb.

The container is held, inspected, and released or treated at your cost, typically adding one to two weeks. On this page we budget AUD 300–1,000 for fumigation, which is the common outcome when timber packaging fails. Selection is partly random, so the only real control is packaging that is correctly treated and marked, and documents that match. BICON and the current DAFF fee schedule are the authorities for your specific goods.

Some do, and it is worth deciding before you order rather than at the wharf. Australian buyers report feather and genuine-leather items being held, and rattan, cane and bark-bearing timber all attract conditions. Tell us what is on the list and we check each one in BICON — some are importable with a treatment or a declaration, and some are not worth the delay they cause to the rest of the container.

Roughly a tonne of crate timber, cardboard and wrap from a 40 ft container, and it goes only if somebody is paid to take it. You cannot put a container's worth of crating in a kerbside bin, and hard-rubbish rules differ by council. Packaging removal is a quoted line on every Australian delivery we run, and the crew clears it on the same day.