Shipping Australian Furniture Internationally: How It Works

People walk into the gallery, fall for a sideboard, and then look at me a little nervously and ask: can you actually ship this to where I live. The answer is yes, almost always. The how takes a bit of explaining.

I've been sending pieces overseas for the better part of three decades. London, Singapore, Hong Kong, Auckland, San Francisco, the Gulf. The piece in front of you in the gallery is heavy, it's solid jarrah, and it was built to outlast you. Getting it from Blythe Rd to your hallway is a logistics problem, not a craft problem, but I want you to know how the logistics part works so there are no surprises.

Photo: David Stanley, CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Most of my international clients pay between AUD 1,200 and AUD 4,500 to ship a single piece door to door, depending on size, destination, and how careful the crating needs to be. The piece takes between four and twelve weeks to arrive once it leaves the workshop. Insurance is mandatory and I don't compromise on it. Customs duty and GST equivalents at the destination are the buyer's responsibility. Those vary by country and I'll walk you through what to expect for yours.

That's the elevator pitch. The detail is below.

The first conversation about shipping happens before I cut any timber. Commissioning a table for a flat in Singapore where the lift doesn't take a 2400mm top in one piece, I need to know that on day one. Some bases come apart for shipping; the Cone Table breaks down into the cone and the top, for instance. Some don't. Knowing the building, the doorway widths, and the stairwell turns means I design the piece to arrive in one whole life, not in pieces with a regret attached.

For pieces from the gallery floor, the conversation is shorter. I measure the doorway you're shipping into, and we work backwards from there.

A piece of solid jarrah doesn't travel naked. Every international piece I send leaves the workshop in a custom plywood crate, lined with closed-cell foam and braced internally so nothing inside the crate can move.

I build the crates myself for smaller pieces. For anything over about 150 kilos or any awkward geometry, I use a specialist fine-art crater in Perth who builds export-rated cases: heat-treated timber (ISPM-15 stamped, which most countries require for plant quarantine), foam-padded, sealed against moisture. The piece sits in there in a stable microclimate even if it spends six weeks in a container.

A good crate weighs about 30 to 40 per cent of what the piece weighs. That's normal. Yes, you pay to ship the crate. It is not optional.

The crate gets collected from the workshop by a freight company and trucked to Fremantle. That's about three hours up the road by Bussell Hwy and then the Forrest Hwy. From Fremantle, the piece goes by sea to almost everywhere except a small number of cases where air freight makes sense (very small, very urgent, or to landlocked destinations with limited port access).

I use the same two shippers I've used for years: one specialist art shipper for high-value or unusual pieces, one general furniture and household goods shipper for straightforward dining tables and sideboards. Both know my crates and both have moved my work before.

Your table sits in a steel box in the middle of the Indian Ocean for several weeks. The crate is the thing that decides whether the piece you collect on the other side is the piece I put in.

Sea freight is the right answer for almost every piece. A standard dining table from Fremantle to Singapore takes about three to four weeks once it's on the water; to the UK, six to eight weeks; to the US west coast, four to six. The piece travels inside a shared container with other furniture and household goods, usually palletised or floor-loaded by the shipper.

Air freight is faster but four to six times the price, and the pressure changes during flight can be hard on glued joins if the crating isn't perfect. I've sent a handful of pieces by air over the years, usually small, usually urgent, usually for gifts with a deadline. I'll quote air if you ask, but I'll always tell you what sea would cost as well.

Every piece I ship internationally is insured for its full retail value, door to door, with marine and transit cover. The premium is small relative to the value of the piece, usually 1 to 2 per cent of the insured amount, and I include it in the shipping quote. Non-negotiable.

In thirty years I have had two pieces damaged in transit. Both were repaired or remade. Both were insured. The system works if you don't try to shortcut it.

This is where most clients have questions. Here's what to expect, roughly, based on the destinations I ship to most often. Rates change, so confirm with your local customs broker before you commit. These are 2025 rules of thumb.

• United Kingdom: 0 per cent duty on Australian-made furniture under the UK–Australia FTA, but 20 per cent VAT on the landed value (piece + freight + insurance). Customs handles it; your shipper organises it; you pay on delivery or in advance.
• Singapore: 9 per cent GST on the landed value. No furniture duty.
• Hong Kong: No duty, no GST on furniture imports.
• United States: Generally no duty on Australian hardwood furniture under HTS classification. State sales tax doesn't apply to imports.
• New Zealand: 15 per cent GST on landed value. Free trade agreement covers duty.
• United Arab Emirates: 5 per cent customs duty plus 5 per cent VAT.

I provide all the export paperwork: commercial invoice, packing list, certificate of origin under the relevant trade agreement, and the ISPM-15 fumigation certificate for the crate. Most clients handle the destination customs themselves through the shipper. To skip dealing with the paperwork, the shipper can clear the piece on your behalf for an additional fee.

The shipper delivers door to door, but "door" usually means the front entrance of the building, not the room. Inside delivery, lift-up, and unpacking are extras. They're worth paying for if the piece is heavy or the building is complicated.

If you've ordered a piece that needed to be partly disassembled for shipping (a Cone Table base separate from the top, for instance) the shipper's team can reassemble on site, or I'll send a one-page assembly note that anyone with a spanner can follow.

Every crate I send has my workshop number on it. If the piece arrives damaged, you take photos before unpacking any further, you stop, and you call. I'll deal with the shipper and the insurer. If the piece needs repair I'll arrange a local specialist; if it needs to come back to Yallingup, we work that out together. In the worst case I remake the piece. It has happened twice. It is part of the deal when you make heirloom furniture for a global address book.

A small aside. I'm the WA distributor for Cattlean Italia, an Italian family furniture maker, and the same logic runs in reverse for those pieces. They arrive here from Italy, on the same kind of crates, through the same kind of process. The reason I distribute their work is that I respect how they make it. Knowing how a piece travels safely is part of knowing how it's made.

who John Streater actually is

Photo: Calistemon, CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Some real numbers from recent shipments, rounded:

These include crating, freight, insurance, and basic delivery. Inside delivery, customs brokerage, and destination taxes are extras.

If you're in the South West and want to look at pieces in person before talking shipping, the gallery is open six days. Google Maps sometimes misdirects via Wildwood Rd — stay on Bussell Hwy, turn at the Carbunup store, then Blythe Rd.

Yes, we can ship it to where you live. We've done it before. The piece you fall for in the gallery is built to travel. That's part of what solid hardwood furniture is for. The making takes years; the moving takes weeks. Both of them get done properly.

Read next: commissioning a dining table, step by step · heirloom gifts for the big occasions.