Kiwi Production

There's a push to get New Zealanders to buy locally made goods going at the moment, in the form of a campaign called 'Buy Kiwi and We've got it Made!'.



Fine sentiments and a great idea, but unfortunately it also serves to highlight how much isn't made here and how consumer items can consequently be pretty expensive as the retailer adds on the freight costs of getting whatever it is shipped out to New Zealand.

For example, a Le Creuset iron cooking pot. In a homeware shop in Wellington, I saw one proudly displaying a 'reduced' price of NZ$389: checking John Lewis (UK department store) website I found the equivalent standard price of £105. Yes, the one here is 50% more expensive, but really what bothers me is that no-one appears to make a local equivalent - decent cookware made by Kiwis for Kiwis (and anyone else in the 'neighbourhood' who'll buy it, of course), it surely makes sense?

Doing a quick search for 'kiwi-made cookware' on google didn't exactly blow away my impression that they indeed don't make such things, sad to say.


I know NZ has a small population, its still relatively young (at least in the industrial sense) and the place is somewhat isolated from the big marketplaces we have in the Northern Hemispheres, but I think its a shame that they need to depend so much on importers.

Perhaps it really would be more expensive to locally make iron cookware than to import from France, I don't know. Cos I can't believe its a skills deficit or lack of desire to make it themselves.