Building materials imports have been on the rise in Australia and are tipped to increase further as the domestic market comes under greater cost pressures.
The Housing Industry Association (HIA) recently called for the establishment of a national building product accreditation scheme, as more and more building products move from local to offshore manufacture.
Brickworks managing director Lindsay Partridge was recently quoted in The Australian saying that while domestic residential construction used to be supplied by almost wholly Australian made products, "Now that's changing".
"The imports are gradually creeping up . . . It is no longer possible to reduce the costs under your control, to a point where it's cheaper than buying product overseas," he said.
Partridge said Australia's building materials companies were increasingly interested in importing products because of rising investment costs in the manufacturing sector.
Brickworks now imports a specialist product from Europe, which has saved it from having to open a factory in Australia, and is looking at importing products from Southeast Asia and China.
This kind of move, Partridge says, would allow a company to redeploy the money elsewhere and achieve better returns.
