Pānui - August 2026

In this edition:

Kia ora koutou

Welcome to Pānui for August 2026.

This month we are implementing changes to the application form and standard conditions for investments in forestry. The production forestry pathway was introduced as part of the Overseas Investment Act reforms that came into effect in March this year. You can read about the changes below.

The team at LINZ is focused on making assessments as efficiently as possible, and we will continue to refine the processes and information we gather to help us do that.

We will continue to advise you of changes through Pānui.

If you want to stay up to date on a more regular basis with any changes to our online forms you can register to receive change update notices as well as Pānui by registering on our website: Subscribe to news from our overseas investment team

Ngā mihi

Daniel White

Head of Regulatory Practice and Delivery
Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand

Forestry investments - changes to application forms and consent conditions

The production forestry pathway came into effect as part of the reforms of the Overseas Investment Act. These investments are now assessed through a streamlined national interest process, delivering faster decisions while ensuring land remains used for production forestry.

As part of implementing this new pathway, we are making refinements to ensure we get the right information upfront. This will help to assess applications more efficiently, as well as improving the data we use to monitor compliance with conditions.

The application webform now includes fields for information about the crop of trees on the land. This includes the age class, species, and how they are registered in the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Improving the quality of information provided will allow LINZ to more effectively monitor consent conditions to harvest and replant.

The Investment Plan template has been updated to include extra questions for recent farm to forest conversion (within 5 years). In these cases, LINZ requires additional information on the circumstances of planting the land and the timing of steps in the transaction. This is to ensure land was used for forestry activities when the transaction was entered, and the investment is therefore eligible under the production forestry pathway.

We have also updated conditions of consent which will apply to all applications submitted from today. Please review the revised conditions before you submit a production forestry application.

Revised Production Forestry conditions

Previously, conditions provided an allowance of up to 5% by area of the crop of trees to be registered as permanent forestry in the Emissions Trading Scheme. This allowance is now removed for exotic trees, although this does not prevent native tree species being registered as permanent in the ETS.

In line with the flexibility in the 6 March 2026 Ministerial Directive Letter (Ministerial directive letter | Legislation, ministers and delegated powers) there will be the ability, in certain situations, to not impose the usual conditions to the degree necessary to achieve environmental outcomes for land impacted by weather events and soil erosion.

Updated digital dashboards

The latest data on approved overseas investment consents is now available on our interactive dashboards.

The visual dashboards present data current up to 30 June 2026, providing a big-picture view of the decision summaries we publicly release each month. The dashboards can be filtered according to such things as decision pathways and regions and are presented in both graph and map form.

The updated dashboards are available on the LINZ website:

Overseas investment dashboards

Decision summaries for July 2026

Benefit to New Zealand

• 202600310 - Arvida RV2 Limited
• 202600103 - Northway No.2 Limited Partnership
• 202600148 - NZCE Investments Limited

Primary consent pathway - Sensitive land

• 202600511 - Waikanae Beach Retirement Village Limited

Primary consent pathway - Business decision

• 202600157 - Rubik Australia Pty Limited
• 202600491 - IH2026 Limited (IB HoldCo) and J2026 Limited (JW HoldCo)
• 202600544 - Danone S.A.
• 202600556 - Toyota Materials Handling New Zealand Limited (Vapors)
• 202600530 - PEF Pass AI, C.V.

Primary consent pathway - Production forestry

• 202600506 - Ingka Investments Forest Assets NZ Limited and Ingka Investment Managements NZ Limited
• 202600561 - Corisol New Zealand Limited

Exemption - Discretionary

• 202600428 - Paul Ben Meyerhof

Exemption - Farm land advertising

• 202600377 - Stratford Solar P LP
• 202600403 - Oceana Gold (New Zealand) Limited
• 202600427 - Eastern Bay Solar Farm Limited

Exemption - Large apartment development

• 202600345 - Wolfbrook Residential (25 Churchill Street) Limited

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