Thinking of sourcing engineered flooring direct from China? Read this first

Why does direct-from-China pricing seem so attractive? 

Chinese factories are selling timber flooring into New Zealand and Australia at prices that don't make sense elsewhere, because the US and Europe have shut them out with anti-dumping duties and Canada is following. The US has applied anti-dumping duties on Chinese wood flooring since 2011, and most exporters now face combined duties well over 50%. Europe added duties of up to 36% in July 2025, and Canada is collecting provisional duties on Chinese decorative plywood while its own investigation runs. Three of the biggest Western markets are closed or closing, and that volume needs somewhere to go. New Zealand has no tariff and no anti-dumping measure on flooring at all. 

That doesn't necessarily make the flooring bad. It means the price you've been quoted was built for a market that no longer wants it — treat this as the start of the assessment, not the end. Here is what to check, and what we do about each one. 

What should you check before committing? 

1. Will the shipment match the sample? 

It is easy for a factory to make a sample look good, but a full production run may use different machinery, operators or stain batches, and colour, brushing, gloss and grade can all shift as a result. The floor may arrive looking close to the approved sample, but not close enough for the client standing on it. 

At Forté, each production run is checked against an approved physical control board, and our quality-control partners inspect during production so we can correct or reject a batch before it ships. If you are buying direct, agree in writing what the production run will be measured against and who decides whether it passes. 

2. What cannot be seen in the sample? 

Two floors can look identical in a showroom and behave completely differently after six months of a family, a dog and a kitchen chair. The difference is the coating system: which lacquer, how many layers, the cure and, above all, the adhesion to the timber. Get it wrong and you get easy scratching, dull patches at the sink and coating peeling in traffic zones by year two. "UV lacquer, seven coats" on a spec sheet tells you nothing on its own. Our floors are finished with named coating systems we specify, and we test adhesion, scratch resistance and gloss on production boards, not samples — our seven-year residential coating warranty is what that testing pays for. 

Formaldehyde emissions matter too. Engineered flooring is timber, glue and coating, and both the glue and the coating off-gas. Cheap urea-formaldehyde adhesives are still common in flooring nobody has specified otherwise, and formaldehyde is a known respiratory irritant and carcinogen — a new floor with a chemical smell that lingers for weeks is a warning, not "new house smell." We use no-added-formaldehyde adhesives and test our products for VOC emissions, and we will give you the reports. If you are buying direct, ask for the emissions certificate for your specific production batch, not the factory's generic certificate from three years ago, and ask who carried out the test.

3. Can the timber be traced? 

Ask where the timber was harvested, not only where the flooring was manufactured — a packing list from a trading company is not the same as traceable chain-of-custody documentation. Forté holds both FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification, giving us an independently audited trail through the supply chain rather than relying on a factory declaration alone. Many factories in China source their oak and plywood from Russia, currently deemed conflict timber under both the FSC and PEFC schemes. 

4. Who carries the compliance and warranty risk? 

Import directly and you become the New Zealand importer and the local point of accountability, including the Building Product Information Requirements (BPIR) documentation every building product has needed since 11 December 2023 — a factory in China won't write one for your container, and council can ask for it at consent or on site. On consented projects, swapping a certified system for an uncertified product can mean providing alternative evidence and getting council approval before installation, not after. 

The legal position shifts too. Buy through a New Zealand supplier and the Consumer Guarantees Act and Fair Trading Act sit behind the transaction, with the supplier holding the warranty. Buy direct and that factory sits outside New Zealand law, so your recourse is a deposit already paid and an email chain — and once you supply that floor to your client, you become the supplier in law, with the Building Act's implied warranties and the CGA pointing at you, not the factory. 

Forté's Timber Overlay Flooring System is certified under CodeMark CMNZ70143, covering E3 internal moisture and F2 hazardous building materials, which a building consent authority must accept as evidence of Building Code compliance within its certified scope. We also carry a 25-year residential structural warranty, a ten-year commercial structural warranty and a seven-year residential finish warranty, held by a New Zealand company you can drive to. With a direct purchase, check who will honour the warranty, under which country's law and what costs are actually covered. 

5. What happens when you need more product? 

Factory minimums are commonly 400 to 500 sqm per colour and production run — workable for one stage in one finish, harder when a project runs several colours or stage two starts a year later needing another 180 sqm, since natural timber and stain batches change and a later order may not match even under the same colour name. At Forté, our quality controls let batches be mixed and worked together, and local stock reduces the wastage you need to carry while improving your odds of sourcing top-up or replacement boards. 

6. Who is available when something goes wrong? 

Flooring issues are rarely caused by one factor: subfloor moisture, underfloor heating, installation, adhesive selection, expansion allowance and site conditions can all contribute. With a local supplier, there is someone who understands the specification, can speak with the installer and can attend site. With a direct purchase, the installer and builder are largely on their own — and if a floor fails after handover, the flooring itself may be the smallest cost, with uplift, disposal, accommodation, kitchens, skirtings, reinstallation and repainting quickly exceeding the original supply price. 

or defective. 

7. Will it get through council? 

Timber flooring in a kitchen, laundry or bathroom must comply with clause E3 of the Building Code, internal moisture, and since the E3/AS1 changes that compliance isn't automatic — which is where a lot of direct-import floors come unstuck. The pattern we're seeing: the consent goes through cleanly because the drawings specify a CodeMark-certified floor, then the builder swaps in a cheaper product from a different factory without telling council, sometimes by oversight, sometimes because the named floor was only ever there to get the consent through. 

Section 40 of the Building Act requires work to match the consent, and breaching it is an offence carrying fines of up to $200,000 plus $10,000 a day while it continues. A product swap needs council approval as a minor variation or an amendment before the floor goes down, not after — and MBIE's guidance treats an uncertified replacement for a certified wet-area system as an amendment, meaning E3 compliance must be proven for the new product first. 

Inspectors do catch this. Council then has three options: withhold the code compliance certificate until compliance is proven, issue a notice to fix (which for a wet-area floor can mean uplift), or issue a certificate of acceptance instead of a CCC — a permanent flag on the property file that unconsented work exists, with no assurance it meets the code. The exposure runs further: the LBP who signed the record of work can be referred to the Building Practitioners Board, the homeowner has a Fair Trading Act claim, and the importing builder is left holding the BPIR liability described above. We know of at least one project where the substituted floor came back up because the builder couldn't prove compliance after the fact. 

Forté's Timber Overlay Flooring System is CodeMark certified across every wood flooring collection — the first overlay system in New Zealand to hold it. CodeMark carries the same legal status as an Acceptable Solution, so council must accept it within scope, covering both E3 internal moisture and F2 formaldehyde emissions and backed by independent moisture testing from SGS New Zealand. If the spec says Forté and the floor is Forté, the inspector's question has a one-page answer. If the spec says Forté and the floor isn't, that's not a Forté floor — and we'll say so when council calls us. 

The short version 

The cheap container is cheap because the US and Europe priced Chinese flooring out with anti-dumping duties, and New Zealand hasn't. Buying direct can work, but only if you're prepared to become a flooring importer in your own right — writing the spec, funding inspections, testing emissions, running a legal-harvest due-diligence system, writing the BPIR, proving E3 compliance to council, holding stock, carrying the warranty and standing behind the floor for 25 years. That's a business, not a purchase. 

If you'd rather build houses, we're happy to talk. Bring us the quote you've been given and we'll walk you through what's in it and what isn't — no pressure, no pitch, just an honest comparison from people who have been importing timber for a long time and have made, and learned from, most of these mistakes so you don't have to. 

And if you're pricing a large project and need real volume, talk to our commercial team. They value-engineer flooring packages for developments every week, know where the cost in a specification matters and where it doesn't, and will put a sharp price in front of you with the warranty, the CodeMark and the stock behind it. Direct isn't the only way to get a good number. 

By Gaius Piesse, Sales Director – Australasia, Forté