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Port Pallets

Guide

Heat treatment and approved treatments for wood packaging

Heat treatment is the most common approved treatment for wood packaging. Here is what it is, what it is not, and where the confusion usually happens.

Published 2026-09-10 · Last reviewed 2026-09-10 · Next review due 2026-12-10

This guide is general information written for people working around UK ports. It is not legal or customs advice, and it does not certify that any consignment complies with anything. Requirements change and depend on the specific goods, materials, route and dates involved. Always check the official sources linked below, and take professional advice where the consequences of getting it wrong are significant.

Why treatment exists

The point of treating wood packaging is to kill organisms that could survive a journey inside the timber and establish themselves somewhere they should not be. Approved treatments under the international standard are designed to achieve that outcome to a defined level, verified by a registered provider under national oversight.

Heat treatment in practice

Heat treatment involves raising the temperature at the core of the wood to a specified level for a specified duration, monitored and recorded. It is a controlled process with defined parameters, not simply putting timber somewhere warm. The specific parameters and the acceptable methods are defined in the international standard and applied through national schemes.

Heat treatment is not kiln drying

Kiln drying reduces moisture content for dimensional stability and handling. It is a manufacturing process with different objectives and different parameters. Timber can be kiln dried without having been heat treated to phytosanitary requirements, and the two should never be treated as interchangeable in an export conversation.

Other approved treatments

The international standard recognises more than one approved treatment. Methyl bromide fumigation has historically been one of them, but its use has been restricted or discouraged in many jurisdictions on environmental grounds, and several countries and regions have moved away from accepting it. Additional treatment methods have been added to the standard over time. Which treatments a specific destination accepts is a destination question, and it changes.

Treatment is not the whole answer

Three things have to line up for wood packaging to be acceptable on an international movement: the wood has to have received an approved treatment, that treatment has to have been carried out by an appropriately registered provider, and the packaging has to be marked in the prescribed way. Treatment alone, without registration and marking, does not get a consignment through inspection.

Where things go wrong at ports

  • Dunnage and internal bracing overlooked entirely, because nobody classed it as packaging.
  • Pallets repaired with untreated replacement boards while still carrying an old mark.
  • Assuming an old mark from a previous journey remains valid after modification.
  • Assuming a treatment accepted by one destination is accepted by another.
  • Assuming manufactured board products and solid wood follow the same rules — they generally do not.

What we do and do not claim

Port Pallets does not claim treatment registration or the authority to apply phytosanitary marks on this website. Where a consignment needs treated and marked wood packaging, that requirement is discussed and evidenced for the specific order — it is never implied by anything published here.

Sources

Each link was checked on the date shown. Where a site blocked our automated check we say so rather than implying a clean result.