LINZ and Maritime NZ to lead transformation to digital e-Navigation

In Budget 2025 the Government made available $28.6M to develop high-tech navigational products that will transform shipping in New Zealand waters. 

Beehive 19 June 2025: Largest maritime navigation system upgrade in decades 

The Maritime Digital Transformation initiative will revolutionise how mariners interact with data such as electronic charts, water depth information, ocean surface currents and navigational warnings.

Mariners will also benefit from enhanced safety, fuel and route efficiencies using the new digital products. 

LINZ and Maritime NZ are working together to roll out the new digital products over the next four years. 

LINZ and Maritime NZ 

The New Zealand Hydrographic Authority sits within LINZ and is responsible for navigation products including up-to-date nautical charts in New Zealand waters and areas of Antarctica and the South-west Pacific, and tidal and bathymetric (ocean depth) data for New Zealand. 

Maritime NZ is the national regulatory, compliance, and response agency responsible for the safety, security, and environmental protection of New Zealand’s coastal and inland waterways. It issues navigational warnings to seafarers across a 50 million square kilometre area as part of the World-Wide Navigational Warning Service.

LINZ and Maritime NZ are jointly responsible for ensuring that New Zealand meets its obligations under the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea, known as ‘SOLAS’. 

This includes staying up to date with global navigation standards.  

LINZ and Maritime NZ will work together on the MDT programme to apply the new international safety standard the ‘S-100’ which is set by the International Hydrographic Organization.   

The S-100 standard is part of a wider global shift to eNavigation.

Rolling out a new, digital navigation framework – S-100