The headline number is grim enough on its own. Around 3,023 New Zealand companies were placed into liquidation in the year to March 2026, and the 286 recorded in March alone made it the worst March in 11 years. We covered that 11-year high when the figures landed. The more useful question is what sits underneath it. Which industries are actually going under, and why.
Break the data down by sector and a clear pattern appears. One industry supplies the most failures by a distance, but a different one is failing at the fastest rate. They are not the same story, and the gap between them is the part the headline misses.
An 11-year high, by the numbers
For scale, there were 749,895 companies on the register at 31 March 2026, and in the first quarter alone 15,743 new ones were incorporated against 10,530 removed. Liquidation is the sharp end of that churn, the businesses that did not simply close but collapsed owing money. At around 3,023 for the year, the failure count is back to levels not seen in over a decade.
The credit bureau Centrix, which compiles the figures, describes business stress as having peaked but not passed. That is the backdrop. Now to where it is landing.
Construction has the most failures
No sector loses more companies than construction. In the year to March, 768 building and construction firms were liquidated, around 30 percent of all liquidation appointments. When a developer stops paying, the damage runs down a long chain of subcontractors, which is why one builder failing often takes several smaller trades with it.
But scale matters here. Those 768 failures are only about 0.9 percent of all registered construction firms. Construction tops the table partly because it is simply an enormous, fragmented industry full of small companies. The raw number is alarming. The rate is closer to ordinary.
Hospitality is failing fastest
That is where hospitality changes the picture. It recorded 399 liquidations, fewer than construction in raw terms, but that was up 49 percent on the year and equal to about 1.3 percent of all hospitality businesses. Measured by the share of an industry going under, cafes, bars and restaurants are the hardest hit in the country.
It makes intuitive sense. Hospitality runs on thin margins and discretionary spending, the first thing households cut when money is tight. A cafe cannot pass on a rates rise or a power bill the way a supermarket can. When customers tighten up and costs climb, the squeeze hits fastest at the table.
Where the increases are steepest
| Sector | Liquidations, year to March 2026 | Change on year |
|---|---|---|
| Construction | 768 | highest total |
| Hospitality | 399 | +49% |
| Other services | 174 | +40% |
| Automotive repair | 74 | up from 27 |
The momentum is broad. Beyond the table, retail liquidations rose 34 percent over the year and transport operators 27 percent, the latter squeezed by fuel costs and thin freight margins. Automotive repair nearly tripled, from 27 failures to 74. The one clear exception is agriculture, where liquidations actually fell 11 percent, helped by firm dairy and meat prices and healthier farm balance sheets. While the towns struggle, the farm is having a better year.
What is actually killing these businesses
Two forces are doing most of the work. The first is cost. Rent, insurance, food and the council rates and power bills we have written about separately have all climbed at once, and many small firms have no way to absorb them. The second is demand, with households cutting back through the downturn, so the revenue side weakens just as the cost side rises.
There is also a third, less obvious driver. Inland Revenue has been actively chasing the tax debt that businesses were allowed to defer through the Covid years. For firms that were quietly insolvent but limping along on unpaid tax, that enforcement is often the event that tips them over. Some of this surge is not new failure so much as a reckoning that was postponed.
Has it peaked
Possibly, but the warning signs have not cleared. Insolvency specialists point to winding-up applications, the legal step that precedes many liquidations, still running at elevated levels, which means the pipeline of failures is not empty yet. The cost pressures are easing only slowly, and the IRD enforcement has further to run.
The shape of the recovery, if it is one, will show up in this data first. Watch whether hospitality’s rate of failure starts to fall and whether construction’s raw numbers come down. Those two lines, the rate and the count, are the clearest signal of whether the worst is behind the country’s small businesses.
Quick answers
How many companies are being liquidated in New Zealand?
About 3,023 companies were placed into liquidation in the year to March 2026, an 11-year high. March alone recorded 286, the worst March in 11 years, against a register of about 749,895 companies.
Which industry has the most liquidations?
Construction, with 768 firms liquidated in the year to March, about 30 percent of all appointments. But that is only 0.9 percent of construction firms. Hospitality has the highest failure rate at about 1.3 percent.
Why are so many businesses failing?
Rising costs for rent, insurance, rates and power, weaker consumer spending through the downturn, and Inland Revenue chasing tax debt deferred during the Covid years, which tips already-struggling firms over.
As at June 2026. Sources, Centrix company liquidation data for the year to March 2026 and the New Zealand Companies Office register. See also our earlier reporting on the 11-year liquidation high and on council rates rises feeding business costs.
Is your industry feeling the squeeze, or holding up better than the figures suggest? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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