Structural Pine

The bulk of our framing is radiata pine, grown in Australian plantations and milled here. It comes from the cooler parts of the country: the Green Triangle on the South Australia and Victoria border, the southern NSW plantations around Tumut and Tumbarumba, the central west around Bathurst and Oberon, Gippsland in Victoria, and pockets of Tasmania and south-west WA.

From there it goes to the big Australian sawmills: AKD, the country’s largest softwood miller, along with Timberlink, OneFortyOne, Hyne Timber and Wespine. If you are in South Australia, a lot of your framing has come from close to home: two of those mills sit in the Green Triangle, and local operations like SA Pine mill and treat pine right here in the state.

It is a renewable crop, too. Radiata pine is grown on roughly 25 to 30 year cycles and replanted after harvest.

Australia does not grow enough structural pine to meet its own demand. Our softwood plantation area has barely moved since 2010, and the country is on track to be short of the timber for around 250,000 house frames by 2035. The plan to plant a billion trees by 2030 will help, but that wood cannot be cut until the 2040s.

So somewhere around a fifth to a quarter of our structural timber is imported, and that share climbs whenever building runs hot. New Zealand sends across radiata pine, treated and untreated, though its harvest is tightening over the coming years.

Europe fills much of the rest: slow-grown European redwood and whitewood, often called Baltic pine, milled in the Baltic states and Central Europe and shipped here for framing and trusses. The biggest name in European structural pine here is Stora Enso. North American pine also arrives in tighter periods.

Here is the important part. Wherever it grew, structural pine sold in Australia is graded to the same Australian Standards before it can be used. Most framing is Machine Graded Pine, MGP10 or the stiffer MGP12, where every length is machine tested for strength and stiffness.

A stick milled at Tarpeena and a stick milled in Lithuania both have to earn the same MGP10 stamp, and once they have, they are used the same way. Treatment, whether untreated, H2, H3 or H4, is then applied to suit where the timber is going, again regardless of origin.

So the label on the pack matters far less than two things being right for your job: the grade and the treatment.

We carry structural pine from leading Australian mills along with quality imported pine, all graded and ready to build with: MGP10 framing in untreated and H3, plus H4 treated posts. After appearance or joinery pine instead? That is a different product (see Joinery Pine).

Whatever the job needs, send us the list and we will sort the right grade, treatment and sizes.