Transport and logistics connections

New Zealand has extensive road and rail transport systems, and effective inter-island links. Our privately-run deep-water ports are served by over 30 global and regional shipping lines at internationally-competitive stevedoring costs.

International airports in seven urban centres across the country are served by most major international airlines.

Sophisticated telecommunications infrastructure

New Zealand’s telecommunications infrastructure includes five international submarine cable systems and four onshore mobile networks. The Southern Cross cable alone delivers 240 Gbit/s of fully-protected bandwidth to the United States mainland, Hawaii, Australia and Fiji. As demand increases capacity can be doubled to 480Gbit/s.

Energy supply

New Zealand's overall energy self-sufficiency is around 90 percent, with coal exports balancing dependency on imported oil. Environmentally-friendly, cost-effective hydroelectricity and wind farms are increasingly supplementing natural gas for energy generation.

Our total annual energy supply is projected to grow at 1.1 percent per annum between 2000 and 2025. Growth will be dominated by a 3.5 percent per annum increase in geothermal energy generation, and a 17 percent per annum growth in wind power production.

Research and development

International investment has always underpinned New Zealand's world-leading primary production. It is now fundamental to our science and technology innovation.

Private-sector research and development accounts for nearly 40 percent of all New Zealand research and development expenditure. Venture incubators and research clusters around the country also maximise information and technology exchanges.

New Zealand also has a rich track-record of commercially successful products and solutions developed through government-funded research organisations and business / university partnerships.

Nine Crown Research Institutes (CRIs), each with several laboratory sites around the country, produce world-leading public research. CRIs also spin off viable ventures around key commercial discoveries, from small-molecule synthesis for pharmaceutical production to subsurface earthquake-monitoring systems.

New Zealand university research is strongly geared towards commercial applications. This focus has already produced a series of successful joint ventures, equity holdings in spin-off companies, and licensing of discoveries like self-regenerating carbon scrubbers for fuel cells and nuclear magnetic resonance technology