WELLINGTON, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Meat and dairy manufacturing fell in June after two strong quarters, New Zealand's statistics department Stats NZ said on Monday.
The volume of dairy and meat product manufacturing fell 8.2 percent in value after a 10.7 percent rise in March 2019, Stats NZ said.
"This fall comes off the back of a robust March quarter, where meat and dairy product manufacturing had the highest percentage rise since the December 2013 quarter," business statistics manager Geraldine Duoba said in a statement.
Overall, the volume of total manufacturing fell 2.7 percent, following a 1.3-percent rise in the March 2019 quarter. Excluding meat and dairy, seven of the other 12 manufacturing industries had falls, Duoba said.
Petroleum and coal products manufacturing had the second largest fall, down 9 percent, she said, adding this industry mainly reflects petroleum manufacturing, and quarterly volumes often move up and down sharply.
In contrast, chemical, plastics, and rubber product manufacturing had the largest increase, up 4.7 percent, statistics showed.
"The rise in the chemicals industry is likely a rebound from the fall in the June 2018 quarter, when unexpected outages at a processing plant restricted methanol production," Duoba said.
In current prices, sales values for the June 2019 quarter fell 0.7 percent compared with the March 2019 quarter, she added.
