Australian Quarantine & Inspection Service adopts ISPM 15 bark tolerance for wood packaging

Memo to Members/Grading Agencies

Effective July 1, 2010 Australia will accept solid wood packaging material that is treated and marked as ISPM 15 compliant or other Australian Quarantine & Inspection Service (AQIS) approved treatments and meets the bark tolerance for imports as defined in ISPM 15 - Regulation of Wood Packaging in International Trade.

Annex I of ISPM states:

Irrespective of the type of treatment applied, wood packaging material must be made of debarked wood. For this standard, any number of visually separate and clearly distinct small pieces of bark may remain if they are:

• less than 3 cm in width (regardless of the length) or

• greater than 3 cm in width, with the total surface area of an individual piece of bark less than 50 square cm.

The removal of bark can be carried out before or after the heat treatment.

AQIS retains its bark freedom requirement for any timber other than solid wood packaging material. Only ingrown bark around knots and bark pockets between rings of annual
growth are acceptable.

The full AQIS announcement is attached for your information.

If you have any questions regarding this memorandum please do not hesitate to contact me by email at
info@clsab.ca or by telephone: 613-482-2480.

Chuck Dentelbeck, President & CEO, CLSAB

June 29, 2010

Filed on July 13, 2010