If a customer tells you a shipment to Australia "needs to be fumigated", this is almost always why: the Brown marmorated stink bug. Australia doesn't have an established BMSB population and wants to keep it that way, so every year the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) runs a seasonal program that forces treatment of cargo coming from the parts of the world where the bug is active. Get the treatment and the paperwork sorted before the vessel sails, and the box clears. Miss it, and Australia deals with the problem at your expense in the arrival port.
Why the bug matters
BMSB is a hitchhiker pest. Adults shelter in dry, dark spaces over winter, which is exactly what a packed container, a pallet of machinery or a stack of car parts offers. They don't damage the cargo, they ride along inside it. Once established they wreck horticulture and become a household nuisance, so Australia treats every consignment from a risk origin as a potential carrier during the months the bug is dormant and looking for somewhere to hide.
The season: 1 September to 30 April
This is the part people get wrong. The measures are tied to when the goods are shipped, not when they arrive. For the 2025-26 season they apply to targeted goods manufactured in or shipped from a target risk country and shipped by sea between 1 September 2025 and 30 April 2026 inclusive. Ship on 30 April and you're caught; ship on 1 May and you're outside the window. The dates shift by one season each year but the 1 Sep–30 Apr shape has been stable for years.
Is the Netherlands a target risk country? Yes
Worth checking before you assume you're clear: the Netherlands sits on the DAFF target risk country list, alongside Belgium, Germany, France, Italy and most of continental Europe, plus the USA, Canada, Russia, Turkey and others. So a sea shipment leaving Rotterdam during the season for Australia is in scope. The UK, China, Japan and Korea are treated as emerging risk countries with lighter measures (mostly random inspection and vessel surveillance), but the Netherlands is a full target risk country.
High risk goods vs risk goods
Not every product from a risk country needs treatment. DAFF splits the tariff into two buckets:
- Target high risk goods — categories the bug loves to hide in. From a target risk country these require mandatory offshore treatment. The chapters cover things like certain machinery, vehicles and parts, tiles, stone, fertilisers and similar (chapters such as 27, 28, 29, 49 and 56 are examples; the full list lives in the DAFF factsheet).
- Target risk goods — a wider set that is subject to random onshore inspection rather than compulsory treatment.
Check your HS chapter against the factsheet before booking. If your goods are target high risk from a risk origin, treatment isn't optional.
Approved treatments and the certificate
Three methods are accepted: heat treatment, methyl bromide fumigation and sulfuryl fluoride fumigation. For 2025-26 DAFF added ethyl formate as a new offshore option under its AusTreat scheme. Whatever the method, the treatment has to be done by an approved treatment provider and recorded on a treatment certificate that travels with the shipment. A garage fumigation with no registered provider behind it is worthless to DAFF.
Where it happens matters too. For high risk goods from the mandatory-treatment origins (France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Russia and the USA), treatment must be done offshore before arrival by a registered offshore provider. For other in-scope goods, onshore treatment after arrival can be an option, but it means delay, storage and handling costs in Australia, so offshore is almost always the cheaper, faster route.
What non-compliance actually costs
If targeted cargo arrives without valid treatment, DAFF gives you a short menu: treat it onshore where that's permitted, export it back out of Australia, or have it destroyed. None of those are cheap, and the container sits accruing demurrage and storage while you decide. A clean treatment certificate obtained at origin is a fraction of that.
Don't forget the wood packaging
Separate from BMSB, any timber pallets, crates or dunnage in the shipment must meet Ispm15: heat-treated or fumigated, stamped, and free of bark and pests. Australia inspects wood packaging hard. A BMSB-clean container can still be held over a non-compliant pallet, so handle both. See Wood Packaging Ispm15 for the marking and treatment detail.
How Nexport Logistics keeps Australia shipments moving
We check your HS chapter and origin against the current DAFF season before you book, arrange treatment with an approved offshore provider, and make sure the treatment certificate and Ispm15 marks are in order so the box clears the first time. It runs alongside your booking and Customs file in Nexportal.
Shipping to Australia in the stink bug season? Email info@nexportlogistics.nl and we'll tell you upfront whether your cargo needs treatment.
Official sources: DAFF — Seasonal measures for Brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB) · DAFF — Goods subject to BMSB measures (factsheet). Related: Ispm15 · Wood Packaging Ispm15 · Customs