Fuel importer margins in New Zealand

Dubai Crude is a medium sour crude oil extracted from Dubai. Dubai Crude is used as a price benchmark or oil marker because it is one of only a few Persian Gulf crude oils available immediately.
Importer margin: the gross margin available to the retailers to cover domestic transportation, distribution and retailing costs within New Zealand, as well as profit margins. It is calculated as the difference between the discounted price less duties, taxes, levies, the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and the importer cost. The calculation of importer margins was adjusted in September 2015 to include discounting activity. This adjustment has been carried back to October 2006.
Importer cost: the cost of importing the fuel to New Zealand. It includes the cost of purchasing the fuel in Singapore, shipping it to New Zealand, insurance and losses, and wharfage and handling.
Premium petrol 95 R: the most common unleaded premium petrol with 95 octane rating.
NZ US exchange rate: The weekly average exchange rate.
ETS: Costs associated with the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), based on the prevailing carbon price from the New Zealand Carbon Market.
GST: The GST component of the weekly average adjusted retail price.
Taxes: Total direct taxes and levies on a given fuel. This excludes GST.
Price excluding tax: The adjusted retail price less direct taxes and levies, GST, and ETS.
Board price: The national average advertised price for a given fuel for the week.
Adjusted retail price: The national average price paid by consumers for a given fuel for the week.
Importer margin: The discounted diesel price less direct taxes and levies, GST, ETS, and the importer cost.
Importer margin trend: This is a trend series calculated for the importer margin series. It is based on a LOESS smoothing algorithm.

New Zealand petrol and diesel retail prices presented here represent weekly average retail prices from Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch: the main port price. These prices from October 2006 onwards have been adjusted to account for the significant discounting activity (through loyalty schemes, shopper coupons and regional discounting) that has become increasingly common since about 2006, and are referred to as the discounted price.
The level of discount is estimated each quarter by comparing the quarterly average main port price to the quarterly average retail price collected by Stats NZ as part of their Consumers Price Index (CPI) calculations. Stats NZ compile this price series by surveying a selection of service stations in 12 regions of New Zealand, as well as collecting information about discounting from the major fuel retailers.

https://www.mbie.govt.nz/assets/improvements-mbies-weekly-fuel-monitoring-series.pdf

Road User Charges are not included in the price of diesel.

From 7 May 2025 The Ministry began using Datamine for data source of fuel pricing, which provides data from over 1500 stations across the country. Data from the new source is combined with Stats NZ regional population estimates to calculate a national average fuel price. The change of the new data source applies for retail pricing data from 1 January 2022 onwards. This means that all data from this point onwards has been revised as we’ve switched it over to this new methodology.

In December 2018 the provider applied 2 adjustments to the data to ensure the Auckland regional fuel tax is reflected in the data:
- the retail price series was adjusted, to account for price differences between Auckland and the rest of the country
- a weighted-average regional fuel tax has been added to the duties, taxes and direct levies data to account for the 10 cents per litre tax applicable only in the Auckland region.

Under 'Data and data sources', select 'Weekly table'.

Weekly monitoring of national average prices and retail importer margins for regular petrol, premium petrol, and diesel.

The Ministry monitors importer margins because they are an indication of the competitiveness of New Zealand’s retail fuel market.