ISPM 15 and Packaging Plywood: What Customs Expects

ISPM 15 is the international standard governing wood packaging material in international trade. Getting it wrong is an expensive way to have a shipment held at the border.

## What the standard covers

ISPM 15 applies to solid wood packaging — crates, pallets, dunnage and blocking — with a thickness over 6 mm. Such material must be either heat treated or fumigated, and stamped with the IPPC mark showing the country code, producer registration and treatment method.

## Where panels fit

Manufactured wood products such as plywood, OSB and particle board are generally exempt because the manufacturing process itself eliminates the pests the standard targets. This is one reason packaging fabricated from plywood is popular with exporters: it avoids the treatment cycle entirely for the panels themselves.

## The trap

Many crates combine plywood panels with solid timber frames, bearers or corner posts. The panel may be exempt, but the solid timber is not. Every solid wood component must be treated and marked, or the whole consignment can be refused.

## What we supply

Our packaging-grade panels are manufactured to your drawings, and we can supply ISPM 15 heat treated solid timber components alongside them so the finished crate is compliant without you having to source treated timber separately.

## Documentation

Ask your supplier for the treatment declaration and, where relevant, the phytosanitary certificate. Keep them with the shipping documents — inspectors ask for them at destination, and reconstructing them afterwards is difficult.