New Zealand has a successful mining industry and a wide variety of prospective mineral deposits. As well as gold production worth more than $200 million each year, New Zealand produces silver, coal, ironsand, aggregate, limestone, clay, dolomite, pumice, salt, serpentinite, and zeolite. Total mineral production is nearly 40 million tonnes. The value of the output of the New Zealand mining industry (excluding petroleum) is $1 billion (2004).
The country has more than 600 identified mineral occurrences in 25 different mineral deposit types. There are also 45 coalfields, a producing hydrocarbon province, and several other basins that are highly prospective. This abundant endowment of geological resources for a land area of only 270,500 km2 is a function of a varied and complex geology.
The geology of New Zealand can be described from several aspects such as tectonic history, rock types, mineral resources, the influence of geology on landscape, the evolution of flora and fauna, and so on. Each requires some technical understanding of the other and of geological terms; the shorter the account, the more assumptions that need to be made of this knowledge.
