New Zealand Company Register: How to Search the Companies Register and Verify New Zealand Companies (2026)

1. What is the New Zealand company register?

The Companies Register is kept by the Companies Office, one of the agencies within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment that carry the main responsibility for corporate regulation. The Companies Act 1993 sits at the core of it: registration, the rules for directors and shareholders, disclosure and reporting, and the removal of companies from the register. The register is in English, so unlike most guides in this series there is no local-language name to translate.

One register covers two populations. New Zealand companies sit in the main register, and companies incorporated elsewhere that are registered to do business in New Zealand sit in the Overseas Register, which is part of the Companies Register. Around it sit separate registers: the NZBN Register, which any business can join, sole traders included, and the Personal Property Securities Register, which the Companies Office also runs and which records security interests in personal property. Limited partnerships, incorporated societies, and charitable trusts each have their own Companies Office register again.

2. How to search the Companies Register step by step

Searching is free and needs no account. The RealMe login in the top right of the Companies Register search is for people who maintain a company, not for people who look one up. Everything below works as a guest, except the paid PPSR search.

1. Open the Companies Register search

   Choose between "Search for an entity" and "Search for Directors and Shareholders". One field takes a company name, a company number, or an NZBN. If you have a number, use it: a name search on Fonterra returned 56 results when we ran it.

   

2. Narrow it down with the advanced search

   Click "Show advanced search" to filter by entity type, incorporation dates, address type, words in the address such as a street or postcode, and status. The entity type filter is also how you reach the Overseas Register: pick Overseas ASIC Company for Australian companies, or Overseas Non-ASIC Company for everything else.

3. Read the result line before you click

   The result list already tells you most of what you need: number, NZBN, status, entity type, address, and incorporation date. A search on Fonterra mixes the parent with dozens of other companies carrying the Fonterra name, several of them removed, so check the status before you open the wrong record. You can save up to 1,000 results as a PDF or a CSV file.

4. Open the company record

   The Company Summary tab shows the company number, NZBN, incorporation date, status, entity type, whether a constitution is filed, the annual return filing month with the date it was last filed, an FRA Reporting Month where the record has one, the ultimate holding company, and the registered office and address for service. A "Last updated on" date sits at the top right.

   

5. Work through the tabs

   Directors gives you every current and former director with name, address, appointment date, and a copy of their signed consent. Shareholdings lists the shareholders and their parcels. Documents holds the filed documents as PDFs. PPSR Search runs a paid search of the security interests register behind a login, and NZBN shows the optional business details. Above the tabs, "Company Extract" and "Certificate of Incorporation" generate PDFs on the spot, free.

3. What data is public and what it costs

Reading the New Zealand register costs nothing. The official schedule of fees lists what companies pay to file, not what anyone pays to look, and the only paid search on the record is the PPSR.

For scale, the fees in the schedule are a company's costs: NZ$49.74 plus GST for the yearly annual return, NZ$118.74 plus GST to incorporate, and NZ$175 plus GST to file financial statements under the Companies Act. None of that touches the reader.

The catch is what the register does not contain. The annual return asks for no financial information at all. Financial statements only reach the register from companies that have to file them, and under the current rules that is a short list: FMC reporting entities such as listed issuers and registered banks, large overseas companies, and large New Zealand companies that are a subsidiary of an overseas body corporate or have 25% or more of their voting shares held overseas. Once filed, the statements are public and free. Fonterra's Documents tab holds its financial statements as PDF downloads. A New Zealand-owned company outside those groups does not have to file them, whatever its size.

Beyond accounts, there is no employee count anywhere on the record, and contact details are optional NZBN fields. Fonterra's trading name, phone, email, website, and industry classification fields are all blank.

4. New Zealand legal forms, briefly

The Companies Register knows three kinds of New Zealand company and two kinds of overseas company. The entity type on the record is the exact label to filter on. Everything else, from partnerships to trusts, lives outside the Companies Register.

If a New Zealand counterparty does not appear in the Companies Register, check what it actually is before assuming anything is wrong. A sole trader or a partnership is only findable through the NZBN Register, and only if it has taken an NZBN.

5. How to verify a New Zealand company: a practical checklist

1. Confirm the company number, NZBN, and status

   Search the number or NZBN and check that the name, entity type, and registered office match what you were given, and that the status reads Registered rather than Removed, In liquidation, or In receivership. Open "View previous names" too: Fonterra was briefly Global Dairy Company Limited on the day it was incorporated. For a quick first pass, our free company lookup finds the registration and revenue data in one search.

2. Check the annual return date

   Every company must file an annual return every year, and the Registrar may remove a company that does not. The record shows the annual return filing month and the date the last return was filed. A last-filed date more than a year old is worth asking about, because not filing is a ground for removal.

3. Verify the directors

   Open the Directors tab and check that the person signing for the company is listed, with an appointment date that predates your contract. Every company needs at least one director who lives in New Zealand, or who lives in Australia and is a director of an Australian company. Then run the name through the banned directors search on the same site. Undischarged bankrupts do not appear on that list, so check the Insolvency Register as well, which is also free.

4. Check who owns and controls it

   The Shareholdings tab lists the shareholders and their parcels, and the summary says whether the company has an ultimate holding company. A company must notify a new or departing holding company within 20 working days. For listed companies and companies with extensive shareholdings, the register only shows the 10 largest share parcels, which is why Fonterra's tab shows ten. For the full list you have to ask the company.

5. Read the documents

   The Documents tab holds the director consents, the annual returns, the constitution if there is one, any receiver's or liquidator's reports, and the financial statements if the company has to file them. Check the most recent filing dates, and look for insolvency documents before you look at anything else.

6. Search the PPSR before you lend or buy assets

   From the PPSR Search tab you can check whether anyone holds a registered security interest over the company's property. It costs NZ$2 plus GST, needs a login, and you must have a lawful reason for the search under section 173 of the Personal Property Securities Act 1999.

6. Limitations of the official register

To be clear: for looking up a company, the New Zealand register is detailed and free. The limits appear when you need financials, contact data, or the whole population at once:

• No accounts for most companies. Only FMC reporting entities, large overseas companies, and large New Zealand companies with overseas ownership have to file financial statements. A New Zealand-owned company outside those groups does not, and the annual return holds no financial information.
• Shareholdings are capped for big companies. For listed companies and companies with extensive shareholdings, only the 10 largest share parcels are shown. The full list sits in the company's own share register.
• Contact data is optional. Trading names, phone numbers, email, websites, and industry classification are voluntary NZBN fields, and even a company the size of Fonterra leaves them empty.
• 1,000 results per export. Searches above that have to be refined or replaced by the bulk data, which is a monthly snapshot rather than a live feed, and is only released on request under an access agreement.
• Director addresses are about to thin out. Directors' addresses are public today. The Companies (Address Information) Amendment Act 2025 will let directors with safety concerns replace their residential address with an alternative address, and it commences by Order in Council or at the latest on 18 November 2026. Directors with a Family Court protection order can already apply to have theirs suppressed.
• Each kind of entity has its own register. Companies, limited partnerships, incorporated societies, and charitable trusts each sit on a separate register, and sole traders only appear on the NZBN Register.
• Security interests cost extra. The PPSR is the one paid search, at NZ$2 plus GST per search behind a login.

If you check one New Zealand supplier a quarter, none of this matters. If you need revenue, contacts, or every company at once, it is the whole problem.

7. Access Companies Register data programmatically

CompanyData maintains a normalized database of all 1,014,708 New Zealand entities, sourced directly from the Companies Register and refreshed as new filings appear. Records are enriched with revenue, employees, and contact data that the official register does not publish for most companies.

Our Company Data API lets you look up any New Zealand entity by company number, name, or address and get structured JSON back in real time, with 150 free lookups to start. It is used by developers, banks, and insurers across 190+ countries, so New Zealand checks work exactly like checks anywhere else.

GET /v1/companies?country=NZ&registration_id=1166320

{
  "name": "Fonterra Co-operative Group Limited",
  "legal_form": "NZ Co-operative Company",
  "registration_id": "1166320",
  "city": "Auckland",
  "status": "registered"
}

Every field above is what the free Company Summary on the Companies Register shows for Fonterra. Revenue, employees, and contact details come back on the same record where we hold them, and are absent here for the reason this guide keeps running into: the register does not publish them for most companies.

8. New Zealand vs other company registers

New Zealand gives away identity, control, and ownership data free, and keeps most companies' financials out of the register altogether. For context: