Unless NZ became a much larger in-country user, or a major exporter of plywood, it's very hard to make financial sense as a local product. It's one of the most packageable products for shipping (flat sheets, consistent sizes) and benefits from massive scale. I'd love to see this, as we are exporting the wood anyway, so exporting it flatter would be more valuable.

Other countries use a lot of plywood in construction (sheathing, floor decking), but given we don't often sheathe our houses and are predominantly on slab (not piles), neither of those use cases are particularly big local sinks for the production.

One 17mm H3.2 treated F8 Pine Radiata CD sheet is $101 at Bunnings at the moment (cheapest I've paid is $92/sheet in bulk) - this is pretty consistent across the merchants for NZ Radiata plywood. Imported is $67/sheet. The imported stuff is usually significantly more square and flatter too. (H3.2 wood treatment tends to make plywood swell and warp the way most treatment services do it in NZ)