After turning down from a peak of AUD477.6 million for the year-ended August 2016, imports of Builders’ Joinery, declined to AUD443.0 million a year later. Since then, the value of imports has risen quickly to reach an annualized AUD462.9 million in January 2018. Imports for the month of January totalled AUD43.3 million, up 13.6% on January in 2017.
Total imports are displayed in the chart below.
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There are many products included in Builders’ Joinery and few of them are recorded by volume – most only by value. So searching for attribution for the quite strong growth in the value of imports requires we remain examining import values.
For the year-ended January 2018, imports totalled AUD120.6 million, up 14.6% or AUD15.3 million on the prior year.
The chart below demonstrates that over the last year, the significant growth (shown in orange) has been in imports of LVL and I-Beams (HTISC Code 4418.60.00.31).
To go straight to the dashboard and take a closer look at the data, click here.
Drilling into this further, we can see that over the same period, to the end of January, annual imports of Wooden Posts & Beams (including I-Beams and LVL) have grown from several countries, dominated by growth from the USA.
To go straight to the dashboard and take a closer look at the data, click here.
Supplies from the US accounted for just over one-third (AUD40.7 million) of the total for the year-ended January, having grown its import value by 35.8% over the year. The Russian Federation supplied wooden posts and beams of less than half the value of the US supplies, with its AUD18.9 million of imports down 15.8% on the prior year.
Supplies from New Zealand rose 21.2% to AUD18.9 million and from Finland by 42.8% to AUD16.8 million.
Although the data is only available on a value basis, it seems likely that over a year in which exchange rates were quite stable, rising values equate to increased imports of the more engineered forms of posts and beams. It is uncertain, but we might attribute the growth to the rise in engineered low and mid-rise housing, including the ever-expanding stock of townhouses being approved and built in Australia’s main urban centres.
