Recent headlines about the state of New Zealand’s infrastructure have mostly been disillusioning. Whether it’s our inability to afford new interisland ferries, the apparent poor condition of our state highways, or calls for Lower Hutt residents to “stop pooing” ahead of the Jucy Fest music festival, it’s difficult to escape the impression that New Zealand is struggling to maintain its infrastructure somewhere even close to first-world standards. Read

Electricity distributors have published new forecasts of expenditure on capital and network maintenance. These forecasts have resulted in a 33% increase to overall electricity distribution investment over the forecast period compared to prior expectations, worth nearly $4b over the next eight years.... Read

Infometrics has recently conducted further analysis into planned spending on new electricity generation assets as part of our recent update to the Infometrics Infrastructure Pipeline Profile (IPP). Our analysis has identified some trends in the electricity generation sub-sector, including a shift to... Read

In the early days following Cyclone Gabrielle, there were whispers that we could be facing a repair and rebuilding mission on a similar scale to the one following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. But six weeks after the cyclone, the recovery picture is becoming clearer. By the first half of March, there were just over 100 red-stickered properties across Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne, with more than 1,000 additional yellow-stickered properties. Read

New data from Stats NZ shows that the residential construction subindustry might be over the worst of its cost pressures. Residential construction costs rose by 2.0% in the December 2022 quarter and, although cost inflation is still highly elevated compared to the last three decades, this quarterly increase was the smallest since March 2021. Annual cost inflation for dwelling units has now eased from 16% to 13%pa since mid-2022. Read

Subscribers to our Building Forecasts will have noted substantial upward revisions by Stats NZ to its estimates of “other construction” activity (ie, excluding residential and non-residential construction – so mostly infrastructure) over the last 2-3 years. This article examines why Stats NZ’s “other construction” estimates can be subject to so much revision, and takes an in-depth look at what we know about this segment of the economy. Read

Construction costs increased substantially in the June 2022 quarter. Non-residential construction costs grew 3.6%, residential construction costs grew 4.4%, and civil construction costs increased 5.4% from the previous quarter. Though our forecasts predicted strong quarterly growth for construction ... Read

New analysis from Infometrics points to a considerable lift in infrastructure investment over the next decade, as maintenance and upgrades of local networks ratchet up. Our analysis extends our infrastructure horizon until 2031 and examines where investment will be located, and of what infrastructure type. Read

Joel Glynn has recently joined the Infometrics Team. In a few short months Joel has written a number of news releases and co-hosted our popular monthly webinars, so this month we sit down to chat with Joel and find out more about him and what he’s working on at Infometrics. Don’t miss Joel’s article on the boom in solar farms in this month’s Infometrics newsletter. Read

The number of reported solar farm projects announced across New Zealand had a meteoric rise in the first half of 2022, but how many will see the light of day? Consecutive plans for New Zealand’s largest solar farm have been announced since May 2021, with the follow-through yet to come. Read