Source: Environmental Protection Authority
The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) continues to make progress assessing hazardous substance applications, approving 21 applications in the first quarter of the 2025-26 year.
The first of a new series of hazardous substances quarterly reports shows the queue of applications fell 9 percent from 96 at 1 July 2025 to 87 at 30 September 2025.
During this quarter, the EPA had the lowest number of applications in the queue for new agricultural and horticulture products since early 2022.
The EPA is improving clarity and transparency around application timeframes and processes with quarterly performance reports, says Dr Lauren Fleury, Acting General Manager for Hazardous Substances and New Organisms.
“We’ve been listening to industry, we are making improvements and have achieved good progress in actively reducing the hazardous substance applications queue.
“We are focused on reducing the number of hazardous substance applications by 30 June 2026, including increasing new active ingredient assessments, and we are starting to see the results of a range of changes we’ve made,” says Dr Fleury.
Improvements underway
Dr Fleury says, “So far this year we’ve onboarded 13 new applications staff.
“We’re increasing the use of rapid assessments, including the international regulator rapid pathway.
“We are also updating our risk assessment models used in assessing higher-risk hazardous substances and chemicals that are new to New Zealand.”
Dr Fleury says the EPA is engaging with industry to explore ways to prioritise assessment of substances with the potential to improve economic or environmental outcomes.
“We acknowledge that improvements are still required in the application queue for substances containing new chemical active ingredients, and this remains a priority area for us.”
Supporting regulatory reform
The EPA is supporting work on amendments to the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996 as well as operational improvements to increase efficiencies.
These changes are aligned with recommendations from the 2024 Ministry for Regulation regulatory review into the effectiveness of the approval path for agricultural and horticultural products.
“We expect even more reductions in the queue of hazardous substance applications over time once all the changes are implemented,” says Dr Fleury.
Hazardous substance quarterly reporting
The EPA has introduced quarterly reporting for hazardous substance applications to increase transparency about the status of applications in the queue.
