-Editorial, March issue NZ Manufacturer

Its common to sling the mud at Australia about its coal mines, reliance on coal and exports to South Asia nations. But it’s something else to realise that New Zealand has been importing coal at levels not seen in 14 years.

1. million tonnes were imported into New Zealand last year, much higher than the combined total for 2018 and 2019.

Why is this happening? Because the Government three years ago banned exploration for natural gas.

We even had a climate – change emergency in December last year with coal imports 41 percent higher than in December 2019.

Food for thought? The 2018 ban on companies exploring for natural gas has caused this spike.

New Zealand’s manufacturing sector saw a slower rate of expansion during February, according to the latest BNZ – BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI).

The seasonally adjusted PMI for February was 53.4 (a PMI reading above 50.0 indicates that manufacturing is generally expanding; below 50.0 that it is declining).  This was down 4.6 points from January.

PMI Time Series Table

National Indicies	Feb 2020	Oct 2020	Nov 2020	Dec 2020	Jan 2021	Feb 2021
BNZ – BusinessNZ PMI	54.1	52.2	54.9	48.3	58.0	53.4
Production	54.9	51.9	55.4	52.4	59.3	57.3
Employment	51.5	52.3	51.3	49.8	56.1	49.8
New Orders	56.2	53.2	56.7	50.5	62.8	56.2
Finished Stocks	53.5	49.3	59.5	45.3	52.9	51.2
Deliveries	53.6	49.1	51.6	45.0	48.8	47.6