New Zealand's primary sector is going gangbusters - and it's just driven our highest ever monthly goods trade surplus.
Statistics NZ's figures for April show that in the month the difference between what we exported and what we imported resulted in a surplus of $1.43 billion, which beat the previous record of $1.37 billion - also for an April month but during the pandemic affected times in 2020.
"New Zealand has had only four monthly surpluses over $1 billion. The last two were in 2020 and two out of the four were also in April months," Stats NZ international accounts spokesperson Viki Ward said.
"The overlap of the dairy and fruit industry seasons contributed to this high."
New Zealand imported $6.4 billion and exported $7.8 billion of goods (a record) in April 2025.
A year ago, in April 2024 the result for the month was actually a small trade deficit of $12 million.
Stats NZ said increases in our primary products exports in April 2025 compared with April 2024 contributed to this surplus, including:
- milk powder, butter, and cheese up $601 million, to $2.2 billion
- fruit up $265 million, to $1.2 billion
- meat and edible offal up $269 million, to $1.1 billion
- logs, wood, and wood articles up $141 million, to $481 million.
In the April 2025 month, these products made up 63% of New Zealand’s goods exports, compared with 58% of goods exports in the same month last year.
Milk powder was the largest contributor to exports in April 2025, reaching $1.0 billion, an increase of $247 million (32%) compared with April 2024.
In terms of the annual position, the trade deficit in the 12 months to April 2025 was $4.8 billion, but this was down from a deficit of $10.2 billion in the 12 months to April 2024.
Annual goods exports for the period ended April 2025 were valued at $75.4 billion, up $6.8 billion from the previous year, while annual goods imports were valued at $80.3 billion, up $1.4 billion from the previous year.
Back on the monthly figures, in terms of major destinations for export goods, the exports to our biggest destination, China, in April topped the $2 billion mark. This was not a record, but was up $476 million (30%) on the figure for the same month in 2024. The largest rises were for milk powder, butter, and cheese, up $165 million.
Exports to the United States were over $900 million, up $184 million (25%) on April 2024, exports to the European Union were just over $725 million, up $184 million (34%), exports to Australia were just under $725 million, up $34 million (4.9%) and exports to Japan were just over $490 million, up $54 million (12%) on the figures for April 2024 .
15 Comments
Excellent news! The policies of the National government are starting to bear fruit in a tough environment.
I agree it's good news. Not sure how much we can attribute to the current government though, looks like it's mostly commodity price related and maybe a good year for growing fruit?
Huh? Are National involved at setting the price of WMP at auctions? Can't see how this is their doing...
Of course National have no influence over the price of WMP or fruit crop, but they have been much more restrained in their spending, that's why they deserve credit. Labour would have continued they high spend mode and thus continued with the deficits.
Yes, those tax breaks for landlords have certainly driven massive innovation and resulted in a boom for our primary industries. I would never have seen it coming.
Cringe.
I'm going to call BS on your comment unless you can tell me which National policies dtopped our dollar by 10% aginst the US$, or caused global dairy prices to hit record highs.
Deficit/surplus is not only about the earning side, it's also about the spending side, and National have been much more restrained in spending than Labour were, when in government.
Maybe the current low cost of oil has helped. Certainly, all those recently redundant contractors and workers will be consuming less of everything.
Great news!
Good to hear but this doesn't drive the economy like the working couple with 1.5 kids living in a renovated villa, with polished floors, in Grey Lynn.
And at the moment they're not up to much.
How much of this is the rise in price of said exports? Looking at you WMP
There's some pages of export quantities rather than values in the excel sheet here
https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/overseas-merchandise-tra…
You could have a dig around to answer your question. At first glance, looks like dairy export volumes are up a little on last year, meat is down a little, and fruit is way up. Aluminium down I guess because of the dry winter deal they made to slow down production.
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