Written for an Australian shipper sending freight to New Zealand. Both are markets Reddlaw onboards in, so this lane reads the same in reverse — but the levies and GST below are the ones charged on arrival in New Zealand.
Trans-Tasman freight has been duty-free since 1990, so duty is not where your border cost comes from. Since 1 April 2026 New Zealand charges consignment-based levies instead of report-based fees1 — NZ$118.44 by sea2 on a high-value import, plus 15 per cent GST on the goods, the freight and the insurance3.
If you have shipped across the Tasman before, you already know the freight is duty-free. That part has not changed since 1990 and is not what this page is about.
What changed is the rest of the bill, and it changed recently enough that most of what is written about landing costs in New Zealand is now describing a system that no longer operates.
New Zealand replaced its report-based border fees with consignment-based levies from 1 April 20261. The structural change matters more than the headline: charging now attaches to each consignment rather than to the reporting event.
The figures, excluding GST, for a high-value import — meaning a consignment over NZ$1,000, which any pallet will be:
The sea and air gap is almost entirely the Customs half; the biosecurity component is the same either way. And note the low-value side: low-value goods crossing as freight are now levied per consignment regardless of how they are declared1. Consolidating small consignments to duck a charge does not work the way it used to.
New Zealand GST is 15 per cent, calculated on the value of the goods plus any duty plus freight and insurance3. Not on the goods — on the landed value. On a pallet where freight is a meaningful share of the total, the difference is real.
There is a carve-out worth knowing if you also sell smaller consignments direct: GST does not generally apply to low-value goods sold to a New Zealand GST-registered business for business use, and a supplier may presume a customer is not registered unless given a number5. Many Australian sellers assume the 2019 offshore-supplier rules caught everything. For genuine B2B they generally do not — but the presumption runs against you, so the number has to be collected.
ANZCERTA is the reason duty is not on your bill. It entered into force in 1983, and tariffs on all goods were eliminated by 1 July 19906. That is the whole of its effect on your landed cost.
Which is the honest through-line here: zero duty is not zero cost, and the charges that do vary are the ones the agreement never touched7.
You do still have to prove origin to keep the duty at zero, and the paperwork for that is lighter than most exporters assume: no certificate of origin is required — a declaration by the Australian exporter on the invoice or another commercial document is enough, and it can be electronic8. Your importer must still be able to substantiate the claim if Customs asks, so the underlying records matter more than the format.
Worth flagging: New Zealand Customs' own ANZCERTA page lists a certificate of origin as one acceptable form of evidence. That is compatible with the fact sheet — a certificate is sufficient, not necessary — but it reads as though one is expected, which is probably why brokers keep asking.
The origin test itself is a change-of-classification rule against a schedule. The modern rules took effect on 1 January 2007, and the old factory-cost route was repealed from 1 January 20129. Whether your specific goods pass is a lookup against the agreement's Annex G, which we were not able to retrieve — so this page names it rather than paraphrasing rules nobody read.
It does not tell you whether your goods satisfy the origin rules, and it deliberately says nothing about biosecurity or timber packaging requirements into New Zealand — the Ministry for Primary Industries site could not be retrieved during this research, and guessing at biosecurity rules is how a consignment gets held at the border.
There is also a date conflict we could not resolve: the Australian Border Force says the modern origin rules took effect in January 2007, while New Zealand Customs says revised rules took effect in September 2011. Neither page explains the other. We have quoted the Australian one and would not rely on either without checking.
What changes the numbers above: mode, first — the sea and air levies differ by about NZ$67 per consignment. Then how much of your landed value is freight, since GST is charged on that too. Then whether your buyer is GST-registered.
New Zealand is a market we onboard customers in, so this lane works in both directions. Customs is contracted out rather than left with you, with Reddlaw assigning a broker if you do not have one — though Reddlaw is not a licensed customs broker itself10.
What Reddlaw charges for coordinating the movement depends on the workflow and the operating volume, and is set with you rather than published as a lane rate. Carrier and provider costs are invoiced to you directly by each provider.
After you submit, a cross-border shipment targets three carrier quotes on an eight-hour window11, measured in business time rather than wall-clock12. We do not quote transit times, and we do not arrange cargo insurance at this time13.
Every numbered claim above, and where it came from.