Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) recently put out a press release which outlines the continuing foreign acquisition of New Zealand. “In 2025, the OIO approved the sale of 250,669 hectares of freehold land or interests in land (such as leasing or forestry rights) to foreigners. This is a substantial increase on 2024, when the sale of 149,214 hectares was approved, and is above the average for the decade 2016-2025 of 158,644 hectares. In 2025, 231,171 hectares of the freehold land or interests in land were from one foreign investor to another or one New Zealand part-owner to another. Both of these figures are the highest since 2016,” said CAFCA.
CAFCA regarded statistics on sales of land to overseas interests as “poorly recorded and incomplete” saying the best estimate is that in 2011 at least 8.7 percent of New Zealand farmland including plantation forestry, or 1.3 million hectares, was foreign owned or controlled. “It may be higher.”
Radio New Zealand identified the one hundred largest private landowners in 2019. with forestry companies dominating the list. Radio New Zealand estimated that “at least 3.3 percent of New Zealand’s land is foreign owned.” The percentage of farmland would be almost double: in 2018, 13.7 million hectares were in farmland out of New Zealand’s total land area of 26.7 million hectares. However, that does not include smaller landowners, or the widespread overseas ownership of leases, forestry cutting rights and other forms of control of the land.
Foreign ownership resulted in most of profits not remaining in New Zealand. Transnational corporations took $100.5bn in profits out of NZ in the decade 2016-2025. In that time, less than a third of these profits were reinvested back into NZ on average.
CAFCA do a mighty good job. CAFCA’s Murray Horton deserves a knighthood. Imagine government obsessed with foreign investment, doing that! LOL.
Governments invariably are myopic lacking foresight. To that add naivety by governments, because most foreign investors take their profits back to their HQs overseas!
Foreign investment has disadvantages such as loss of local economic control, profits leaving the host country, unfair competition for domestic firms and a lack of rrespect for the environment and the Kiwi egalitarian culture which embraces public access.
Locally, I have seen foreign forestry corporates from China, Korea, Malaysia and others buy out a New Zealand owner or operator and then immediately erect locked gates.