About overseas products and standards

The Building (Overseas Building Products, Standards, and Certification Schemes) Amendment Act has been passed by parliament, and received royal assent on 07 April 2025.

The passing of the Act is an important step forward to make it easier and more affordable to build in Aotearoa New Zealand by boosting consumer choice and access to internationally-recognised products.

How this will be achieved

Recent changes to the Building Act 2004 are intended to deliver the greatest benefit for Kiwis through improved competition and lowered costs of building, ensuring our homes and buildings are safe and durable. This will be achieved by:

Recognising groups of overseas standards 

With this change, the Minister for Building and Construction uses a set of criteria to decide whether to recognise groups of overseas standards and standard certification schemes. This will make it easier for any building product that has met an appropriate standard from a recognised group of standards published by a standards organisation to be specified in a building design.

The change is intended to give designers, builders, building owners and building consent authorities confidence in building products that meet a recognised standard or standards.

Putting all building product specifications and standards into one new pathway.

The Government has amended the Building Act to enable the development of a new regulatory pathway, called the building product specifications. This will hold all the building product specifications and standards that can be used with the acceptable solutions and verification methods to demonstrate compliance with the Building Code.

As long as a product (no matter where it is from) complies with an equal standard for its specific purpose, the building can:

• comply with the acceptable solutions and verification methods, and
• must be accepted by Building Consent Authorities.

Creating the building product specification resource

Putting the building product specification resource together will involve moving product manufacturing and testing standards from the acceptable solutions and verification methods published under the Building Act into it.

MBIE’s initial thinking for the building product specifications is to focus on identifying equal standards, where the main costs of construction are concentrated, for example, standards relating to products, such as internal linings, external cladding, windows, plumbing products and insulation.

Amending the Building Act to accept products certified overseas

Currently, CodeMark is the product certification scheme in Aotearoa New Zealand that shows a building product or method meets the requirements of the Building Code.

To increase flexibility, the Building Act has been amended to:

• enable the Chief Executive of MBIE to recognise overseas products or groups of products
• remove existing requirements for certification and add a regulation-making power to set criteria for the recognition of certified overseas products
• require building consent authorities to accept recognised overseas products, when deciding compliance with the Building Code.

Benefits of using overseas products and standards

Allowing for the use of overseas products and standards could mean:

• Avoiding unnecessary and costly delays because builders and designers wll be able to count on high-quality building products from overseas being accepted for use.
• Consenting authorities can be confident that products certified under recognised overseas certification schemes are compliant with the Building Code. They will be required to accept these certified products, as long as they are used as intended.
• More support local manufacturers to test their products against widely accepted overseas standards, opening the door to important export markets.
• Building consent authorities will spend less time reviewing and making decisions on new or innovative overseas products they have not seen before. It will This adds cost to suppliers and designers who may need to provide more information each time they apply for a building consent for the same product.
• Overseas building products accepted for general use. Typically designers choose products that they know will be easily accepted even though the non-prescriptive Building Code allows for any product to be used as long as it is shown to comply with the Building Code.
• Increasing competition in the market, the Commerce Commission recommended that the building regulatory system needed to create clear compliance pathways for more key building supplies and make it easier for designers to show that the products they have chosen comply with the Building Code.

Research that helped realise the benefits

EBOSS reported in their Construction Supply Chain Report 2021 that Aotearoa New Zealand imports about 90% of all building products (or components) sold in the country. 

EBOSS Construction Supply Chain Report 2021 [PDF 269KB] – eboss.co.nz

The Commerce Commission's market study into residential building supplies found that competition for the supply and purchase of key building supplies is not working as well as it could.

Commerce Commission's market study into residential building supplies – comcom.govt.nz

Additional information

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