Source: NZ Marine Industry Association, Autumn 2026 News (nzmarine.nz)
New Zealand has 15,134 kilometres of sea coastline and another 3,166 square kilometres of inland lakes and waterways. It is, by any measure, a boating nation. But the full scale of the marine industry that sits behind those waterways, and what it actually produces, exports and employs, tends to get lost in the lifestyle imagery. A closer look at the data published in the NZ Marine Industry Association’s Autumn 2026 News, drawing on both local industry research and the 2025 ICOMIA (International Council of Marine Industry Associations) Yearbook, puts some hard numbers around a sector that is larger, more export-oriented and more structurally complex than most people probably assume.
1,104 companies. 5,451 jobs. One coastline.
Start with the industry footprint. According to the 2025 ICOMIA Yearbook data, New Zealand’s marine sector comprises 1,104 companies employing 5,451 people. That figure covers the full supply chain, from the people who build the boats to the businesses that keep them running.
Breaking it down: 149 boat builders account for 2,202 of those jobs, an average of nearly 15 employees per company. That is not a cottage industry. These are businesses with production lines, skilled tradespeople and capital investment in facilities. The 113 boat accessory and marine equipment manufacturers employ a further 987 people, while the largest segment by company count, 842 service providers, accounts for 2,262 jobs. The service provider category covers everything from marinas and repair yards to chandleries and surveyors, and it is worth noting that this segment is the most structurally resilient of the three. People keep boats in the water regardless of whether new boat sales are up or down, and someone has to antifoul, refit and repair them.
To support all of this, New Zealand has 215 yacht harbours, clubs and marinas, 13,595 wet berths and slips, 2,303 dry storage facilities, 9,000 moorings and 260 boat ramps. That is a marine infrastructure network with genuine national reach, and it underpins an ownership culture that the sales and production numbers reflect.
Who actually builds boats in New Zealand
The ICOMIA production data is where things get interesting. New Zealand domestically produced 4,077 outboard boats in the period covered, valued at €111.3 million. It produced 1,542 inflatable boats (100kg and over) worth €30.7 million, 703 sailboats and yachts worth €30.2 million, and 226 inboard, sterndrive and motor boats worth €61.3 million. The inboard and motor boat category, despite being the smallest by unit count, carries by far the highest per-unit value, reflecting the large, complex and often custom vessels NZ is known for building in this space.
There is also a substantial accessories and marine equipment manufacturing sector. Domestic production of boat accessories and marine equipment reached €220 million, with €106.2 million of that exported. That figure alone is a useful corrective to any perception that NZ’s marine manufacturing is purely about complete vessels.
The picture that emerges is of a genuinely diverse production base: volume outboard hull manufacturing at one end, high-value custom inboard builds at the other, a significant inflatable production capability in the middle, and a large accessories and equipment sector running alongside all of it.
The fleet: 214,000 outboard boats and a lot of PWCs
The owned fleet data in the ICOMIA Yearbook gives a snapshot of what New Zealanders actually have in the water, and the outboard boat dominance is emphatic.
There are 214,247 outboard boats registered in New Zealand. To put that in context against a population of approximately five million, that is roughly one outboard boat for every 23 people. No other vessel category comes close. PWCs are second at 96,268 units, a number that reflects both their accessibility and the growth of that segment over the past decade. Inflatable boats (100kg and over) account for 34,970 units, sailboats and yachts 30,375, and inboard and sterndrive motor boats 13,189.
The inboard fleet sitting at 13,189 is worth pausing on. These are the larger, more expensive vessels, and a fleet of that size represents a significant ongoing market for servicing, refitting, parts and berthing. The 6,622 owned boats in the 12-24 metre range within this category point to a substantial cohort of serious cruising and commercial-adjacent vessels.
There is also a catch-all “other boats” category of 1,196,546 units, which encompasses smaller craft such as kayaks, tinnies and rowing boats. That figure is more a measure of how embedded on-water activity is in New Zealand life than it is a useful commercial metric, but it reinforces the breadth of the boating culture the industry is built on.
Exporting to the world from the bottom of it
The export data is where the conventional perception of New Zealand as primarily a boat-buying market comes unstuck most clearly.
In outboard boats, NZ produced 4,077 units and exported 1,673 of them, valued at €42.5 million. That means roughly 41 percent of domestic outboard boat production left the country. For a category most people associate with the local runabout market, that is a striking export orientation.
The inflatable boat figures are even more pointed. Of the 1,542 inflatable boats produced domestically, 1,157 were exported, against just 483 sold at home. New Zealand exports more than twice as many inflatable boats as it sells domestically. These are not cheap inflatables, either. The 100kg-and-over category captured in the data points to substantial craft, including the RHIBs and commercial tenders NZ has built a genuine international reputation for.
Inboard and motor boats tell a similar story at the high-value end. Of 226 units produced, 83 were exported at a value of €59.3 million, almost equal to the €61.3 million total production value. These are large, expensive vessels going to international buyers.
In engines, 269 outboard engines were exported from NZ, and the accessories and marine equipment sector exported €106.2 million worth of product. Taken together, the export picture is of an industry that competes internationally across multiple segments, not just as a downstream consumer of imported product.
Where the market sits today
The bar chart data in the Autumn 2026 publication, drawn from the PowerStats programme run on behalf of NZ Marine, charts outboard retail sales and total imports from 2016 to 2025. The pattern is consistent with what the wider economy experienced: a significant COVID-era demand surge peaking at approximately 8,000-9,000 retail outboard units annually around 2021-2022 (approximate), followed by a correction back toward pre-pandemic norms.
By 2025, retail outboard sales had pulled back to approximately 6,000-6,500 units annually (approximate). The import data tells its own story: total outboards imported into NZ peaked at approximately 13,000 units around 2021-2022 (approximate), well ahead of retail sales volumes for the same period. By 2025, imports had dropped to approximately 6,000-7,000 units (approximate), suggesting distributors spent much of 2023-2025 running down inventory rather than replenishing it.
One nuance within the correction is worth noting. The over-90hp segment appears to have held its market share better than smaller horsepower bands through the downturn, suggesting that buyers who are still purchasing are skewing toward higher-powered, higher-value product. That has implications for margins across the distribution chain.
Trailer boat registrations by region follow the same broad arc. Auckland leads consistently, followed by Waikato, Bay of Plenty and Canterbury, with Northland a smaller but stable contributor. The 2020-2022 peak is visible across all regions, except perhaps Canterbury, and the subsequent softening is equally broad-based, meaning the correction is generally a national phenomenon rather than a specific regional market issue.
The diesel engine segment, tracked over a longer timeframe back to 2003, shows a different and more stable pattern. Sales in 2025 sit around 300 units (a PowerStats approximate), consistent with the prior several years and well below the mid-2000s peak of approximately 500 units (approximate). This is a smaller, more specialised market and it behaves accordingly.
None of this points to an industry in structural decline. The owned fleet is large and durable, the export performance is strong, and the service and infrastructure base is substantial. What it does point to is an industry working through the natural consequence of a demand spike it did not engineer and could not fully anticipate: too much imported stock, a buyer market catching its breath, and a return to the kind of steady-state conditions that characterised the years before 2020.
For an industry that produced over €220 million in accessories and equipment domestically, exported inflatable boats at a rate of more than two to one against domestic sales, and maintains a fleet of over 214,000 outboard boats in the water, catching its breath looks reasonably comfortable.
Data sourced from the NZ Marine Industry Association Autumn 2026 News, including extracts from the 2025 ICOMIA Yearbook and the PowerStats research programme. Available at nzmarine.nz/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/2026-NZ-Marine-News.pdf
