Standards support Government priorities and open doors to international trade and economic prosperity

Here at Standards New Zealand, we actively encourage greater use of standards generally, and adoption of international standards in particular, as they can support the following economic outcomes:

Trade facilitation

Demonstrating compliance with standards provides assurance of quality and helps give a competitive advantage. International standards help ensure that products and services meet common quality and safety requirements, making it easier to access and trade within international markets.

Standards are fundamental ingredients in many of New Zealand’s free trade and mutual-recognition agreements, including those with two of our largest trading partners, China and Australia. An explicit objective of the ‘Going for Growth’ agenda is to establish new Free Trade Agreements to maximise the benefits for exporters. In Europe and Asia, more and varied trade opportunities have emerged in recent years, including the recently signed New Zealand-European Union, and United Arab Emirates Free Trade Agreements. More opportunities are on the horizon in the Indo-Pacific, South-East Asia, and the Middle East.

Innovation, efficiencies and infrastructure

International standards often incorporate modern industry practice, science, and technological developments. By adopting these, New Zealand industries can benefit from increased innovation and efficiencies, leading to streamlined processes, reduced duplication of effort, and increased productivity, competitiveness, and economic growth.

Standardisation and conformity assessment activities help lead to lower production costs by reducing redundancy, minimising errors, and reducing time to market. These savings, and the added consumer trust and confidence that following standards brings, can help drive competition within a market to the benefit of both businesses and consumers.

Standards that underpin the adoption of renewable energies and the use of new and energy-efficient technologies already exist and are being used in New Zealand to help reshape energy landscapes, improve climate change resilience, minimise waste, and support the decarbonising of key sectors internationally.

Adverse climatic events like Cyclone Gabrielle have highlighted how vulnerable New Zealand’s infrastructure can be, and how expensive it is to fix^[1]. While New Zealand has adopted some international infrastructure-related standards (the majority in the energy, electricity, and gas sectors), there is significant opportunity for further international standards to support other types of infrastructure including telecommunications, transport, civil engineering, building and construction, and renewable energies.

Interoperability and business productivity through increased digitalisation

International standards help ensure that products and services from different countries are compatible and interoperable. This is particularly important in sectors such as information technology, electrical appliance manufacturing, telecommunications, and energy. Through the adoption of these standards, New Zealand can ensure integration with global supply chains and increase domestic competition[2].

Currently, around 90% of global trade is still paper based (includes emails, spreadsheets, etc) but every aspect of our economy is becoming increasingly reliant on rapidly evolving digital technologies, and data information security and management.

In a 2022/23 survey of 2,702 New Zealand businesses^[3] more than half thought they would benefit from being more digital and only around 40% of small businesses had an online presence at all. Adopting international standards that provide a global baseline for trade documents and data will facilitate interoperability across networks and platforms with our international trading partners. These standards may also be useful in reducing unnecessary compliance activities domestically, for example removing the need to provide the same information to multiple government agencies.

With the rapid evolution of digital solutions and the increasing use of contentious technologies (such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and facial recognition), small businesses will need to come to grips with the challenges posed by a complex and changing technological landscape. Digital standards are a key part of providing assurance to New Zealanders by setting performance expectations and providing good practice guidance, helping to protect businesses and the public by ensuring activities in the digital sphere are conducted fairly and lawfully.

International recognition and foreign investment

Compliance with international standards can enhance the reputation of New Zealand businesses and regulators by demonstrating a commitment to quality, safety, and internationally recognised good practice. This then builds trust and assurance with customers, investors, business partners and stakeholders.

If the international standards that apply in overseas economies and markets also apply in New Zealand (enabled through adoption whereby the standard is assessed by a Standards NZ committee of industry representatives as being fit for domestic use), this will make New Zealand an easier and more desirable economy for foreign investment and trade. It will also support domestic businesses to access new overseas markets.

Compliance and assurance through good regulation

The standards development/amendment/adoption process follows a clearly defined and structured consensus-based and representative process led by a core team of recognised industry experts to make sure that standards are sufficiently robust, relevant, and enduring. This process supports industry buy-in to, and compliance with, standards making them a valuable tool to achieve quality, performance, and safety outcomes both inside and outside of regulations.

Hundreds of standards are already used to support New Zealand regulatory systems through citation in legislation or regulation; 13% of Standards NZ’s current catalogue, including both New Zealand Standards and joint standards with Australia, are cited. Half of all standards purchased from Standards NZ last financial year were cited publications.

High confidence in standards as reliable indicators of quality, provides potential for the standards system to play a greater role in achieving regulatory objectives. Instead of creating technical regulations or using other policy levers, policy makers and government regulators can identify existing standards or commission the development of standards with quality, safety, or performance specifications that can achieve regulatory objectives. These standards can then be cited in outcome-based regulations as an acceptable means of compliance. Even outside of regulatory systems, there are significant commercial, quality, and safety drivers gained from standards-based documents. 

For those responsible for developing policy and regulation, we encourage you to search Standards New Zealand’s collection of over 100,000 international, joint Australian and New Zealand standards or get in touch if you wish to explore developing or adopting new solutions.