First release of Manufacturing Survey on new industry classification

Release of the December 2010 quarter results for the Economic Survey of Manufacturing (ESM) continues implementation of a new industry classification, Statistics New Zealand said today. The Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC06) updates coverage of industry statistics and is currently being implemented across Statistics NZ’s outputs.

For the manufacturing sector there have been a number of changes, the largest of which is the inclusion of the petroleum industry, previously included in wholesale.

After adjusting for seasonal effects, the volume of manufacturing sales rose 3.3 percent in the December 2010 quarter.

Rises were recorded for seven of the 13 manufacturing industries, while six fell. The biggest rises were in:

• meat and dairy product manufacturing – up 7.9 percent 
• chemical, polymer, and rubber manufacturing – up 10.1 percent
• metal product manufacturing – up 7.0 percent.

The biggest fall in sales volumes was in the wood and paper product manufacturing (down 4.2 percent).

In current prices, the seasonally adjusted value of sales increased 3.1 percent.

Statistics NZ would like to reassure people that no data was lost during the 22 February Christchurch earthquake. Different methods than usual were used to calculate quarterly GDP, but the same respondent data was used as in this release of ESM results. We do not expect any revision to GDP to be significant (to be released with the March 2011 quarter GDP results).

Users should note that GDP will continue to be presented using ANZSIC 1996 until mid-2012, so coverage of the industries will differ from those in this ESM release.

Geoff Bascand 1 April 2011

Government Statistician