A custom cabinet order from China takes roughly 56 to 80 days door to door for Australia — about eight to eleven weeks — and 80 to 105 days door to door for New Zealand. The difference is not the factory — it is the shipping leg. Below is where every week actually goes, what can be compressed, and the two customs rules that quietly add time to orders that were otherwise on schedule.

This guide is written for builders, joinery contractors, developers and renovators who need a date they can put in a program, not a vague "about three months".

The short version

Sampling sits outside the totals above. If you order a sample first and then release production, add the sample weeks on top.

1. Quotation and drawings: the part you control

Nothing is manufactured from a mood board. Before production can be scheduled we need dimensions, a layout, door finish, carcass material, hardware level and handle type. Shop drawings then go back to you for sign-off.

This stage is the single biggest variable in the whole timeline, and it is almost entirely on the buyer's side. An order where the site measurements are final and the finishes are decided moves to production in days. An order where the client is still choosing between two door finishes can sit here for weeks. The factory clock only starts when drawings are approved and the deposit is in.

Minimum order value is USD 5,000, so a single home or a small project is enough to start — you are not waiting to fill a container before you can order.

2. Sampling: 2–4 weeks

A sample door, a finish panel or a single cabinet takes 2 to 4 weeks. Most trade buyers ordering for the first time do this, and it is usually worth it: a colour that looks right on a chip can look different across a full door.

Two ways to handle it. Sequential — sample first, approve, then release production — is safest and adds the full sample time to your program. Parallel — release production on the carcasses while the door finish sample is in transit — is faster but only sensible when the finish is already familiar to you.

3. Production: 35 to 45 days ex-factory

Standard production runs 35 to 45 days from approved drawings to goods ready at the factory, and that is the same figure for every market we ship to. Note where the clock starts: approved drawings, not the day you first made contact. The weeks people lose are almost always the ones before this stage, not inside it.

What pushes an order to the long end of that range:

• Finish type. Melamine and PVC laminated doors are quick. Lacquer is a multi-coat process with curing time between coats. Wood veneer and stainless steel doors add steps.
• Cross-category orders. Cabinets, wardrobes, wall panels and doors in one shipment means several production lines have to land on the same loading date. That is the point of consolidating — one purchase order, one container — but it does set the schedule to the slowest item.
• Mid-order changes. A size change after cutting has started does not cost a day, it costs a re-run of that batch.
• Chinese public holidays. Chinese New Year is the one that catches importers out. Plan around it rather than through it.

Payment terms are a deposit to start and the balance before shipment. Note the consequence for your program: goods do not load until the balance clears, so treat the payment run as a scheduled task, not an afterthought.

4. Sea freight: 3–5 weeks to Australia, 45–60 days to a New Zealand door

Sea freight to Australian ports runs 3 to 5 weeks. New Zealand is the leg people underestimate: 45 to 60 days, and that figure is door delivery, not port arrival. Fewer direct services and more transhipment is the reason.

Two things to check before you accept any transit figure:

• Port or door? A quote of "four weeks to Australia" is usually port arrival. Unpacking, inland transport and delivery to site sit after that.
• Transhipment. For New Zealand cargo routed through Australia or Hong Kong there is a rule worth knowing: goods may transit, but if they enter commerce in the transit country, or are handled beyond loading, unloading and repackaging, the preferential origin claim is lost. Plain transit without entering commerce is fine for up to six months.

5. Customs: where a container quietly loses two weeks

Duty is not the delay. Paperwork is.

Australia. Qualifying lines enter at 0% duty under ChAFTA, supported by a certificate of origin. GST of 10% applies on import in the normal way. If the certificate is missing or does not match the invoice, the clearance stalls while it is chased — and the container sits.

New Zealand. The normal tariff on wooden furniture is 5%, and China-origin goods enter free under the China–NZ FTA. Two details make this smoother than most buyers expect:

• No certificate of origin is required for Chinese goods entering New Zealand. A declaration of origin on the commercial invoice is enough. That saves a certificate fee and, more importantly, saves days.
• But the preference is not automatic. If it is not claimed, 5% is simply charged — and it lifts the GST base with it.

GST in New Zealand is 15%, calculated on goods value plus international freight plus insurance plus duty. For a GST-registered importer using the goods solely for taxable supplies, that is cash flow rather than cost. Fixed levies on a sea shipment over NZ$1,000 are NZ$73.87 (Customs) plus NZ$44.57 (MPI), so NZ$118.44 per consignment. If a container is opened for inspection, MPI and Customs charge NZ$133 per hour with a minimum charge of NZ$399.

One practical request: ask your supplier to itemise goods value, international freight and insurance separately on the invoice. New Zealand Customs requires the split at entry, and a single bundled figure sends your broker back to the supplier for a breakdown while the clock runs.

6. The biosecurity rule most cabinet buyers have never heard of

This one decides whether your New Zealand shipment needs treatment at all.

Under New Zealand's Import Health Standard for woodware, items made wholly of manufactured wood — plywood, particleboard, oriented strand board, fibreboard, veneer and chipboard — are exempt from the certification and inspection requirements of that standard. Cabinets built on plywood or multi-layer board carcasses with veneered or lacquered doors normally fall inside that exemption. No fumigation, no phytosanitary certificate, no treatment window.

Add real solid timber, however — a solid-timber edge, a solid door frame, a timber benchtop lip — and the shipment is no longer wholly of manufactured wood. The full requirements come back: fumigation or heat treatment, and a treatment certificate. There is also a deadline that catches people: treated goods must be packed and shipped within 21 days, or the treatment is void and has to be redone.

This is worth raising at the specification stage, not at the port. A single decorative solid-timber component can change the compliance path for an entire container.

Australia is different, and it is seasonal. Australia's Department of Agriculture treats China as an emerging risk country for brown marmorated stink bug, and goods shipped between 1 September and 30 April are subject to random inspection — with Chapter 94 furniture explicitly inside that scope. There is no mandatory fumigation for Chinese-origin goods on current settings, but a random hold is a real scheduling risk in those months. These lists are reviewed each season, so confirm the current position before you ship rather than relying on last year's answer.

7. If you are in a hurry, which leg can actually be compressed?

Not production — that is already the short leg. At 35 to 45 days ex-factory there is very little left to squeeze, and a supplier promising to halve it is either quoting a partial shipment or quoting something they have not costed. The two stages with real slack are the one before production and the one after it: your own drawing approval, which is entirely within your control, and the shipping leg, where a different service or a direct sailing can move the date. If a project genuinely needs to land sooner, ask about the sailing schedule rather than asking the factory to rush the build — and expect the answer to depend on the route and the container load rather than on goodwill.

Be careful with numbers below that. If a supplier quotes you 70 days to a New Zealand door, ask which leg they have shortened. Usually the answer is that they are quoting port, not door.

8. Planning backwards from your install date

The useful way to use these figures is in reverse. For an Australian project with a handover date:

• Install week — call it week 0.
• Before that, allow time for unpack, inland transport and site access once the container lands. Your freight forwarder can give you a realistic figure for your port and site.
• Sea freight: 3–5 weeks before that.
• Production: 35–45 days before that.
• Drawings, approvals and deposit: your own lead time, before all of it.

Run that arithmetic and the release date lands well before the install week you had in mind, and further back than most people assume — the 56–80 day window is factory-to-port-to-door only, and your own approval time sits on top of it. For New Zealand, work back from 80–105 days the same way.

Renovators working on a single home have more slack than a builder tied to a handover date, but the same arithmetic applies — the shipping leg is fixed, and the only stage you can genuinely compress is the one before production starts.

9. What actually causes delays

In order of how often they bite:

1. Drawings not signed off, or signed off and then changed.
2. Balance payment released late, so the container misses its booking.
3. A finish or hardware item chosen late and holding the whole order.
4. Origin paperwork wrong or missing at clearance.
5. Chinese public holidays not allowed for.
6. Random biosecurity inspection — infrequent, but outside anyone's control.

Five of those six are avoidable, and all five sit before the goods leave the factory.

FAQ

How long does it take to get custom kitchen cabinets from China to Australia?
About 56 to 80 days door to door, which is roughly eight to eleven weeks: 35–45 days production plus 3–5 weeks sea freight, plus your own drawing and approval time before that.

How long to New Zealand?
About 80 to 105 days door to door — 35–45 days production plus 45–60 days shipping to your door. The production figure is the same as for Australia; the whole difference is the shipping leg.

Why is New Zealand slower than Australia?
The shipping leg, not the factory. New Zealand has fewer direct services and more transhipment, and our New Zealand figure is quoted to the door rather than to the port.

Do I need a certificate of origin?
For Australia, yes — a certificate of origin supports the 0% ChAFTA rate. For New Zealand, no: a declaration of origin on the commercial invoice is accepted, but it has to be claimed or 5% duty applies.

Will my cabinets need fumigation?
For New Zealand, normally not — items made wholly of manufactured wood such as plywood and fibreboard are exempt from the woodware standard's certification and inspection requirements. Add real solid-timber components and treatment plus a certificate are required, with a 21-day shipping window after treatment.

Can I order just one kitchen?
Yes. Minimum order value is USD 5,000, not a full container, so single-home and small-project orders are accepted.

Does a sample delay production?
It adds 2–4 weeks if you approve the sample before releasing production. Running the sample in parallel with carcass production is possible when the finish is already known to you.

Where these figures come from

The production, sampling and freight windows above are our own working figures, not industry averages. The duty, GST, levy and biosecurity rules are from New Zealand Customs, Inland Revenue, MPI and the Australian Department of Agriculture. Seasonal biosecurity settings change, so confirm the current position for your shipping month.

Related reading: the full import cost breakdown, and how to choose a custom cabinet manufacturer in China.

MeShome (Foshan Moyisi Home Furnishing Co., Ltd.) manufactures custom kitchen cabinets, wardrobes, vanities, invisible doors and wall panel systems in Foshan, China, and consolidates them into one order and one container for buyers in Australia, New Zealand and other overseas markets. Send us a layout and a handover date and we will work the program backwards with you.