Meat and dairy products lead manufacturing fall

9 September 2019

Meat and dairy manufacturing fell in June after two strong quarters, Stats NZ said today.

The volume of dairy and meat product manufacturing fell 8.2 percent in value after a 10.7 percent rise in March 2019, when adjusted for seasonal effects.

“This fall comes off the back of a robust March quarter, where meat and dairy product manufacturing had the highest percentage rise since the December 2013 quarter,” business statistics manager Geraldine Duoba said.

Overseas trade indexes (prices and volumes): June 2019 quarter (provisional) reported a fall in meat and dairy export volumes.

Overall, the volume of total manufacturing fell 2.7 percent, following a 1.3 percent rise in the March 2019 quarter. Excluding meat and dairy, seven of the other 12 manufacturing industries had falls.

Petroleum and coal products manufacturing had the second largest fall (down 9.0 percent).

“This industry mainly reflects petroleum manufacturing, and quarterly volumes often move up and down sharply,” Ms Duoba said.

In contrast, chemical, plastics, and rubber product manufacturing had the largest increase (up 4.7 percent).

“The rise in the chemicals industry is likely a rebound from the fall in the June 2018 quarter, when unexpected outages at a processing plant restricted methanol production.”

Manufacturing sales values down 0.7 percent

In current prices, sales values for the June 2019 quarter fell 0.7 percent ($193 million) compared with the March 2019 quarter.

Meat and dairy products manufacturing had the largest decrease, down 2.8 percent ($247 million). Chemical, plastics, and rubber product manufacturing had the largest increase, up 5.7 percent ($135 million).

With price effects included, the unadjusted value of manufacturing sales was $28 billion in the June 2019 quarter, up $364 million from the June 2018 quarter.

The Government Statistician authorises all statistics and data we publish.

For more information about these statistics:
• Visit Economic survey of manufacturing: June 2019 quarter
• See CSV files for download

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