Source: Radio New Zealand
RNZ
Five years after Who’s Eating NZ, this series revisits where our food goes but this time through the lens of Kiwi breakfast, lunch and dinner staples. We track how much of what we produce is eaten here, and who has a seat at our global table during meal times. Today, it’s dinner time.
American fast food consumers, elderly health-conscious Japanese, and middle-class Chinese families all have one thing in common: a taste for New Zealand beef.
Foreign consumers, as a group, buy about 89 percent of the beef from Kiwi farms. It’s good business – in the past five years export earnings have increased 36 percent from $3.6 billion in 2020 to $5b in 2025.
China’s burgeoning middle class saw it grow to become the number one buyer – in 2019 it bought 46 percent of New Zealand’s beef exports. That has eased to 18 percent in 2025 and a new 55 percent tariff suggests that’s unlikely to bounce back. The tariff only applies to exports beyond a quota amount, however, and New Zealand has supplied less than that amount in recent years.
Tariffs are also part of the picture in the US, another big buyer of our beef.
The US imposed a 10 percent tariff on New Zealand beef in April 2025, which it raised to 15 percent in August. In November it dropped the tariff to 1 percent. Despite the chaos, the US still accounted for 43 percent of export earnings from beef last year.
Outgoing Meat Industry Association chief executive Sirma Karapeeva said domestically US beef production was at a 70-year low as consumption was climbing.
“This has resulted in North America overtaking China as our largest beef market. New Zealand is a complementary trading partner, being an important source of lean beef that is mixed with US domestic grain-fed beef to produce burger patties.”
Infometrics chief executive Brad Olsen said cattle numbers in the US are low and there are biosecurity concerns related to the screwworm parasite, which has limited cattle coming in from Mexico.
“They’re having to look overseas. New Zealand’s got beef and the Americans are willing to pay some top dollar for it.”
Demand from overseas can push prices up at home, said Olsen. Farmers want top dollar for their produce and will sell to whoever is paying the most.
“Our prices have to trend domestically in line, to a degree, with international prices.”
It’s not a case of being fair.
“It’s economically rational. You find me a business that would say, ‘Well you know what, I’m going to leave a whole lot of money on the table by only selling domestically and ignore the international money’.”
The demand for dairy, which saw butter prices rise in 2025, is levelling off, but Olsen believes international demand will continue to grow for protein, such as beef.
A trend in healthcare for aging populations is a greater focus on protein, with countries like Japan suggesting older people eat more protein rich food. He thinks suppliers will struggle to keep pace with this demand.
The price of sirloin steak increased 27 percent last year, and mince by 17 percent, he said.
“New Zealanders will continue to face high protein costs.”
If you imagine New Zealand’s lamb meat as a plate of 10 meatballs, Kiwis would get to eat half of a meatball. If the meatballs were mutton, the amount left for Kiwis is even smaller, just 2 percent remains here and 98 percent is exported.
So who is gobbling all the meatballs off our plate? For many years, the United Kingdom was the biggest buyer. But since 2013, China has been top, increasing its spending from $119 million in 2010 to a high of $2b in 2021, when it was eating half of the lamb meatballs on our metaphorical plate. This has since dropped to approximately $1b – two-and-half of those meaty morsels. The US is now second, buying the equivalent of one-and-a-half of our 10 meatballs, ahead of the UK.
Just as they sit unassumingly on the plate of many Kiwi dinner go-tos, the hardy onion is a quiet achiever of New Zealand’s primary produce export earners. Their long shelf life, coupled with an opposite season to the northern hemisphere makes them a valued item on the other side of the world.
In 2025 we sent around 80 percent of our onions offshore, leaving just 20 percent to be eaten in Aotearoa. This amounted to 167,000 tonnes of onions exported, earning $143m.
Unlike other exports, where one country will often account for almost a third of all earnings, buyers for onions are more evenly spread. Indonesia and Malaysia are big onion buyers, along with Germany and the Netherlands, however in 2025 Taiwan took top spot.
If Kiwi onions are a sleeper hit with foreign diners, wine is the rockstar. For every 10 glasses we could fill, nine of them are sipped offshore.
The US, UK and Australia are the biggest buyers, though China’s spending on New Zealand wine has slowly increased.
Exports are down slightly from a high of $2.24b in 2022 to $2.17b in 2025.
NZWine’s latest annual report labels exports “sluggish”, citing a slow global economy and weak wine markets exacerbated by tariffs in the US and taxes in the UK.
The report identifies emerging markets, such as China and South Korea, as areas with the strongest growth.
Where the data came from
Beef: Beef + Lamb New Zealand from September 2019 to September 2020 and StatsNZ trade data for items with a harmonised system code between 201100000 to 202331999.
Sheep: Beef + Lamb New Zealand from September 2019 to September 2020 and StatsNZ trade data for items with a harmonised system code between 204100000 to 204431000.
Onions: Onions New Zealand Inc and StatsNZ trade data items with a harmonised system description containing “Vegetables, alliaceous; onions”.
Wine: NZ Wine and StatsNZ trade data items with a harmonised system description containing “Wine”.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand