Joint trade statement between New Zealand and United Kingdom

This Joint Statement follows the meeting of the Minister for Trade and Investment of New Zealand and Secretary of State for Business and Trade of the United Kingdom on 12 May 2025.

At their meeting, the Ministers celebrated the successful trading relationship between the UK and New Zealand, which reached a record £3.7bn1 or $7.3bn of trade in goods and services in 2024.

At the meeting, the Ministers opened the second Joint Committee of the New Zealand-United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

Significant progress has been made under the FTA, including amongst other things, the commencement of an artists’ resale royalty scheme, the inclusion of further wine making (oenological) practices, the establishment of a legal services regulatory dialogue, the renewal of the engineers’ Admissions Pathways Agreement, a sustainable finance dialogue, a women in STEM event, and a visit to the UK by a delegation of Māori women technology entrepreneurs.

Ministers commended the significant uptake of the Agreement.

Since entry into force, £752.3m ($1,588m NZD) of traded goods successfully used preferential tariffs; i.e. around 82.2% of goods traded between the UK and New Zealand made use of preferences where one was available.

The strong uptake of the Agreement’s benefits is resulting in real savings with the potential to benefit both businesses and consumers.

Between June 2023 and Dec 2024:

• £164.2m or $344.5m NZD (80.7%) of goods imports into New Zealand from the UK used preferential tariffs4. Had these occurred at standard Most Favoured Nation (MFN) tariff rates, they could have encountered an additional £9.3m ($19.5m NZD) in duties.

• £588.1m or $1,243m NZD (82.6%) of goods imports into the UK from New Zealand used preferential tariffs6. Had these occurred at standard MFN tariff rates, they could have encountered an additional £67.4m ($141.8m NZD) in duties.5

The Ministers noted that free trade is a cornerstone of prosperity in both countries. Recognising that open markets, and reliable legal and regulatory frameworks are essential for trade, the Ministers committed to strengthening the rules-based trading system.

The Ministers agreed to work together to strengthen the role that free trade, including the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (which the United Kingdom and New Zealand are Parties to), plays in increasing prosperity and reinforcing resilience against economic turbulence.

This includes growing the agreement ambitiously through further accessions, modernising the agreement through the ongoing General Review, and working with partners to defend the rules-based trading system upon which we rely.

Note to editors:

Sources:  Trade data sourced from the ONS publication of UK total trade: all countries seasonally adjusted October to December 2024 data.

Source: Source: Statistics New Zealand, publicly accessible through New Zealand Trade Dashboard  

Trade asymmetries exist between the UK and New Zealand official trade statistics, but this does not mean that either country is inaccurate in their estimation. Differences can be caused by a range of conceptual and measurement variations between the estimation practices of different countries.

Based on data from New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade, Statistics New Zealand, Customs import utilisation data, April 2025

Estimated duty savings are based on exchanged country tariff schedules and preference utilisation data (footnotes 4 and 6). For UK imports, these are all calculated used the Ad Valorem, Specific, or Compound tariffs applied at the CN8 level. Where appropriate, Ad Valorem Equivalent tariffs were used (source: MacMap). The Bank of England spot exchange rates (June-December 2023, and 2024) was used to convert from GBP to NZD.

The underlying data for the imports into the UK preference utilisation figures were sourced from HM Revenue and Custom’s (HMRC) UK goods imports by tariff regime, February 2025 data. This data is provided on a country of origin basis.

The methodology used to calculate UK preference utilisation rates can be found here https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/preference-utilisation-of-uk-trade-in-goods-technical-annex/preference-utilisation-of-uk-trade-in-goods-official-statistics-technical-annex#methodology-note-for-preference-utilisation-of-uk-trade-in-goods