Building materials in New Zealand are a major industry, accounting for almost half of all goods and services exported.
The country also exports products including machinery, steel and electrical equipment, chemicals, plastics and glass, and some of its largest companies.
The building materials industry is highly fragmented.
New Zealand’s National Building and Construction Council (NBCC) has a branch in the United States and several local building trades, but it does not directly regulate the industry.
The NBCC has limited powers, and a lack of oversight is hampering the industry’s progress.
“We’ve got very little control over the supply chain, the way it’s organised, the price,” said NBCL’s director of operations, Chris McAlpine.
“So it’s a very difficult industry to manage.”
Building materials are traded under various names and tradable on various international exchanges.
The main trade is with the United Kingdom, where there are five main international markets: the UK, the European Union, the US, Canada and Japan.
In the United State, there are more than 1,600 different building materials companies, according to the NBCLC, and the industry is so fragmented that some of the most common names are used in different countries.
The UK’s Ministry of the Economy has said it is looking at establishing a national clearinghouse for building materials in 2018.
New South Wales and Victoria are among the states with no local building trade, but they also have their own trade bodies and have formed partnerships with some overseas firms.
Victoria’s Building and Forestry Council is a trade body that has been operating since 1999.
Its member trades include the Victorian Building and Fire Services, the Victoria Building and Supply Company, the Construction and Trade Union and the Electrical and Electronic Industries Union.
The council says its members are concerned about the lack of local knowledge about the building industry and its impact on the local community.
The NSW Building and Building Trades Council (VBBC) says it does “not currently have a national regulatory body to provide oversight of the sector”.
“There are no national standards for the quality of building materials or the way they are produced, and our local regulations are inconsistent with international standards,” VBBC regional manager and president Stephen White said.
“In some parts of the world, the international standards are not widely known.
Our standards for quality, for example, are not comparable to those in the UK.”
The NSW BVBC is a member of the Australian Building Industry Council, but the industry body is “not involved in the industry”.
The VBBA has not yet made a formal decision on whether to form an association with the industry, but White said the council has asked the government to “get in the game”.
“We’ve been working with them for years, and they have made a number of recommendations, including the establishment of an industry council and a national standard for building material,” he said.