Millions of cigarettes are being intercepted at the border each year, and the methods criminal organisations are using to smuggle them are growing more sophisticated.
According to numbers released to 1News by Customs, over 3 million individual cigarettes have been caught at the border in 2025 so far. Over 8 million were intercepted last year, and it’s expected to hit similar levels by year’s end.
The size of the shipments also appear to be growing, with the “overwhelming majority” of seized items destined for the black market.
In late August, customs investigators seized nearly one million cigarettes imported illegally, evading $1.4 million in taxes. A man was arrested as a result of the investigation.
It’s not just cigarettes either, with hundreds of thousands of grams of chewing tobacco, fruit/flavoured tobacco, heat sticks, rope tobacco, and snuff, as well as thousands of heat sticks and hundreds of cigars being discovered.
1News spoke to Chief Customs Officer, fraud and prohibition, Nigel Barnes, who explained some of the trends the agency had noticed over the last few years.
Smuggler’s methods evolving
Barnes said the biggest trend Customs had seen over recent years was a tendency for larger, more sophisticated smuggling methods. He said some of the methods mirrored what would normally be seen in drug smuggling.
“That’s concealments in sea cargo. So, shipping containers with construction materials in them and inside the construction materials, there’s, say, you know, two million cigarettes,” Barnes said.
Lesley McLinden from Customs said new 3D screening technology was stepping up how officers identify and process biosecurity risks. (Source: 1News)
The seizures also tended to be bigger quantities, “because when you deal with sea cargo, there’s 20 or 40 containers involved”.
Another trend was that tobacco smugglers, similar to drug traffickers, were using shell companies to dodge authorities and hide who they were.
“That said, we still seize plenty of cigarettes and air cargo in the mail, even though we have prohibited the import of cigarettes in the mail since 2022.”
What are some of the other methods used by smugglers?
While Customs has seen more cigarettes seized from cargo ships, just about every method of getting items into the country is being utilised for tobacco smuggling.
This included air mail, air cargo, normal mail, accompanied and unaccompanied baggage, and concealment aboard air and seacraft.
Barnes said some of the more interesting methods he’d seen included cigarettes packed in hollowed-out plasterboard, tobacco hidden in food, cigarettes concealed in hollowed-out doors, and even lamp posts packed with cigarettes.
In May, an Indonesian man was denied entry to New Zealand after strapping five cartons of more than 1600 cigarettes to his body.
By volume of shipments, air cargo and mail were still the most frequently intercepted packages.
“Even though they’re smaller amounts, organisational groups use what’s called the scattergun approach and send lots of small parcels, and they need a certain percentage of those to get through successfully to remain profitable.”
Barnes said recently there had been a tendency for people to smuggle loose tobacco into New Zealand and manufacture cigarettes here. The included reproducing health warnings to make them appear more legitimate.
Where are they coming from?
Cigarettes seized by Customs come from around the world, but the most frequent source was South East Asia – a region that included China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, South Korea, and Singapore.
Barnes explained that New Zealand and Australia’s high excise tax on tobacco made Australasia an attractive market for criminal organisations.
In January, the excise on tobacco increased to $1812.61 per kilogram on manufactured cigarettes. It means that a pack of cigarettes could cost upwards of $50, with the majority of the price being made up of tax.
“There are illicit tobacco markets in every country, regardless of the excise rate.”
He said New Zealand’s excise rates made it “slightly more appealing than leaving the product in the local illicit market”.
How many end up slipping through the border?
Barnes said it was pretty much impossible to tell how many illegal tobacco products were making it past Customs and into New Zealand’s black market.
“It’s hidden by nature,” he said.
Like drugs, catching cigarettes at the border before they enter the country came with “challenges”.
Barnes said that because they were light, they took up a lot of surface area.
“From a classical detection point of view, I guess, they’re easier to search for than drugs. But that said, cigarettes aren’t inherently illegal either.”
He said that presented a challenge to the Customs investigators.
“If we are aware of cigarettes being manufactured overseas and then sent towards New Zealand, well, actually, they haven’t committed a crime until they’ve essentially smuggled them into New Zealand.”
He said the biggest assistance people could provide customs for tobacco detection was by members of the public contacting Customs or Crime Stoppers to report suspicious activity.
