Buy NZ Made & Support Kiwi Businesses!

Published on Jul 29, 2020

The July school holidays were a boon for New Zealand’s stressed domestic tourism market as Kiwis holidayed at home because of the Covid-19 border restrictions.

And with that was a surge in buying New Zealand made products as the manufacturing industry responds to the limitations around imported goods and a greater desire to “support our backyard”.

Tourism New Zealand figures show New Zealanders outside their region peaked at 550,000 on July 11 with Kaikoura up 56 percent in numbers and the West Coast 51 per cent as the South Island benefited the most from domestic travel.

Queenstown had a 43 per cent boost and Fiordland was up by 46 per cent.

Throughout the country, all regions had tourism growth with the top performer in the North Island being Wairarapa at 38 per cent, followed by Ruapehu, which had a near 29 per cent boost in numbers.

There's been a big jump in businesses signing on to the Buy New Zealand Made campaign too with a year’s worth of applications during lockdown lifting participants to 1500.

The New Zealand Made Products Facebook page, set up during the lockdown, has more than half a million followers and just over 100 posts a day.

Buy New Zealand Made executive director Ryan Jennings says the push to shop locally is encouraging and potentially habit forming, especially online.

And the trickle down effect of buying New Zealand products can’t be overstated as it provides jobs at multiple stages of manufacture, delivery and retail.

That’s never truer than with HealthPak who make about 250 million products a year and directly employ 80 staff - and contribute to many more people being in jobs further down the chain.

General manager of sales and marketing, James Kennedy-Grant says for a family run business like HealthPak, keeping everyone employed during the Covid crisis had been the priority.

HealthPak is producing an increasingly diverse range of products but it’s main lines continue to be products supplied to the accommodation sector.

That ranges from coffee and sugar sachets to soap, shampoo and hand sanitiser, and all supplied nationally.

“There would be few accommodation providers who don’t have some HealthPak products in their rooms,” Kennedy-Grant says, adding it has significant flow-on benefits.

There’s the intangible feeling of “doing good” that goes with buying a New Zealand made product but also physical benefits like supply security and greater protection against price fluctuations.

“Take for example a shampoo.  We control the whole product through vertical integration as we make the essential oils and hydrosols, we make the bottle, the cap and most importantly the contents. 

“In fact the only part of a bottle of shampoo that we don’t make is the label, and they come all the way from a supplier on the other side of Auckland. 

“When we say made in New Zealand, we mean it” Kennedy-Grant says.

And because all of HealthPak’s products are produced locally, they have a fast turn around.

Buying New Zealand made products is also good for the environment as any reduction in the use of heavy fuel for ships is welcome.

Though domestic tourism will dip now schools are back - and won’t return to big numbers till Australians, at the very least, can travel here again - the July holidays did show the benefits of keeping it local.

“It’s good to see New Zealand consumers getting on board,” Jennings says.  “If you are giving money to a retailer selling a New Zealand made product then you are giving money to Kiwis.”