AU/NZ — regulation, certification economics and bottom-up sizing

Australia already has an agreed product data schema

It just isn't in a BIM library. The National Building Products Coalition's Common Data Template, in the Building Product Information Traceability and Digitalisation Guide V4.1, February 2026. Lineage: 2018 Building Confidence Report → ABCB National Building Product Assurance Framework (2021), Element 3.

Mandated per product:

• A globally unique identifier per AS ISO/IEC 15459.6 — in practice a GTIN
• Name, brand, description, model number (Global Model Number), net content, unit of measure, variant, serial number where applicable
• Manufacturer and supplier contact details with URLs
• A statement of application and intended use naming the NCC edition, building classification, type of construction and the specific NCC clause
• A conformity declaration with supporting evidence

Product classification is explicitly OPTIONAL, with Uniclass, OmniClass and ETIM all named as acceptable (plus GPC, UNSPSC). It also names the Standards Australia + ICC Universal Data Protocol as emerging and the UN Transparency Protocol for verifiable exchange.

Strategic consequence: in Australia the taxonomy war is not the binding constraint — identity and intended-use are. That makes the ETIM extension work described above optional in Australia rather than unavoidable.

GS1 Australia — the programmatic destination in waiting

• Runs a Building & Construction programme partnered with the NBPC, buildingSMART Australasia (MOU), BPIC, the Australian Steel Institute, Standards Australia and the ABCB.
• Its National Product Catalogue is a GDSN-certified data pool — genuinely machine-to-machine. Construction is not yet a live vertical (live verticals are food/grocery/liquor, healthcare, rail).
• Membership fees published: individual GTIN membership from AUD 79/yr (turnover <$1M, one GTIN) to $485 for a 10-pack. Full membership AUD 225 joining + 675/yr (small) → 1,210 → 1,525 → 5,146 → 12,295 → 16,175 → 22,895/yr (>$10B), ex-GST.
• NPC subscription fees are NOT public — quote-tool lead form only.

New Zealand: mandated fields, no mandated format

The Building (Building Product Information Requirements) Regulations 2022, in force 11 December 2023, oblige NZ-based manufacturers and importers to disclose, per product:

• Product name + a product identifier distinguishing it from other products
• Product line name + identifier where needed
• A description
• The Building Code clauses relevant to the product within its intended scope of use, and how the product is expected to contribute to compliance with those clauses
• Intended scope of use and any supporting design requirements
• Limitations or conditions on use within that scope
• Installation requirements; maintenance requirements
• A statement on any s26 warning or ban under the Building Act
• Contact details: legal and trading name, address for service, website, public email and NZBN — for the manufacturer, and for imported product also the importer

Critically: "BPIR regulations do not prescribe any specific layout or formatting of required disclosure information." NZ mandates the fields but not a schema.

That is the cleanest gap-shaped finding in the entire dossier — a statutory obligation with no machine-readable format. EBOSS and Building Confidence Ltd co-run a free self-assessment tool at bpir.nz, which is the obvious partner or the obvious incumbent depending on how it goes.

Certification and EPD economics — every published fee

The pattern: environmental schemes publish their prices; conformity schemes do not.

• EPD Australasia — fully published, effective 1 April 2026. Joining NZD 1,200 / AUD 1,075 (NZD 1,800 / AUD 1,600 if turnover >$100m). Annual from NZD 800 / AUD 720 (Micro) to NZD 4,800 / AUD 4,300 (Cat 4). No fees for registration and publication of 150 or fewer EPDs per organisation; updates within validity free. Publication requires "a final version of the dataset in an approved MS Excel template for machine-readable EPDs" — a structured-data obligation with real consequences, unlike anything the spec libraries impose. Construction datasets then flow to ECO Platform's digital product database (ILCD+EPD XML via the soda4LCA API — gated, EUR 2,000–10,000/yr).
• EPD Australasia × Rosella Street, July 2026 — verified Australasian EPDs extracted into Digital Product Passports on the AU/NZ DPP Database at AUD 105 per EPD (member) / AUD 300 (standard), no ongoing cost. Used on ACT Light Rail Stage 2A. Caveat: the platform's APIs are described as "upcoming", not shipped — "with upcoming capabilities for data input through upload, syncing, and barcode scanning… via APIs".
• Eco Choice Aotearoa (ex-Environmental Choice NZ) — fully published. One-off application NZD 1,000, then annual licence by turnover from NZD 1,000 (≤$100k) through 3,500 / 5,000 / 7,000 / 9,000 / 12,000 / 15,000 / 18,000 / 22,000 / 26,000 / 30,000 / 35,000 / 40,000 / 45,000 / 50,000 / 55,000 to NZD 61,000 (>$500m). Independent audit fees additional, quoted case-by-case. Ex-GST.
• CodeMark Australia — JAS-ANZ is Scheme Administrator and Accreditation Body; certificates valid 3 years; the mandatory certificate field list is a published spec (CC BY-ND) with every field compulsory except manufacturer/plant details. Cost is explicitly "a commercial arrangement between the applicant and the CodeMark Conformity Body" — unquotable by design. Register is officially PDF-only, though the backing JASANZ JSON API is open and unauthenticated (388 certificates, 62 withdrawn) — scrape-grade, not a contract.
• WaterMark — ABCB plumbing/drainage. Public product database searchable on licence, model, brand, product type, specification and status. No JSON/CSV/API — confirmed by probing. Schedule of Products is a PDF. Scheme fee not public.
• Global GreenTag — Application for Quote → proposal → invoice → certification, on-site audit where required. Cost not public.

Three corrections for anyone pitching compliance

• GBCA does not certify products at all. You get certified by a recognised third-party initiative; GBCA issues that initiative a Letter of Recognition carrying a Responsible Products Value (RPV) which your product inherits. Product database is behind Green Star Manager login; no API. Recognition fees not public. GBCA's published fee schedule is for buildings only. Anyone selling "GBCA product certification" has misread it.
• NABERS is buildings and tenancies only — sectors are building types (office, apartment, hotel, hospital, school, shopping centre, data centre, warehouse). Nothing a manufacturer can obtain.
• The NCC itself is published as XML with a schema on data.gov.au under CC BY 4.0, consumable via the CKAN API. The code is machine-readable; the products are not. ABCB runs conformity registers (NCBP, CodeMark, WaterMark), not product data.

Sequencing note: an EPD obligation that already demands a machine-readable Excel template, and is free for the first 150 products, is a cheaper wedge into a supplier's data than asking them to care about a taxonomy.

ETIM AU/NZ is dormant

ETIM International lists "ETIM AU/NZ", run by the Australian Industry Group, announced 26 November 2021 as a multi-country membership for Australia and New Zealand. Scope "initially the electrotechnical sector", with discussions to expand into HVAC and Plumbing. An en-AU translation is documented, covering only one of ETIM's four sectors, access requiring national membership.

Its own website, etim-aunz.com, is a parked NameBright "coming soon" page — verified by direct fetch, nearly five years after launch. It does not cover tiles, flooring or decorative lighting.

The AU/NZ specification channel

• NATSPEC — national spec, not-for-profit, government + industry owned. Product Partners programme: NATSPEC writes your Branded Worksection, retains full editorial control, and requires NCC conformance. It states plainly that manufacturers "have paid us" to write one — fee exists, amount not public. Scale is small: ~82 branded worksections across ~50 brands (BlueScope/Colorbond/Lysaght/Fielders/Truecore, Stramit, Stratco, Metroll, Capral, AWS, Breezway, Dulux, Haymes, Taubmans, Resene, Kingspan, Fletcher Insulation, Askin, Moddex, Assa Abloy, Interpon, Soprema, Solatube, Danpalon, Regupol, Getzner, Forbo, Evapco). Taxonomy is NATSPEC 4-digit NCS (1989). NATSPEC TR02, April 2026: "There is currently no unified construction information classification system, similar to Uniclass or OmniClass, used nationally." It runs no national BIM object library — only a free Open BIM Object Standard and BIM Object Properties Generator.
• Archify (AU/NZ/HK/ID/MY/PH/SG) — part of Hubexo/BCI. 200+ brands. Managed BIM object creation ("Get in touch"), proprietary marketing categories, cost not public ("solutions that fit your strategy and budget"). ArchifySpec is an AU cloud spec platform on Australian Standards and the NCC. Its Sentiment Survey: 44% of architects say 10–30% of specified products get swapped; a further 33% say 30–50%.
• NBS Australia — real: thenbs.com.au, NBS Chorus + Source, SureSpec structured to NCS codes, pushing Uniclass in. Owned by Hubexo.
• Masterspec (NZ) — 450+ Product Partners, 8,500+ specifiers, in-house editorial authors branded work sections, 8–10 week onboarding, CBI classification, eCert for environmental certs. You host your own CAD/BIM; Masterspec links out. No API. Supplier cost not public.
• miproducts (NZ, Construction Information Ltd) — 1,161 suppliers / 9,590 listings, CBI categories, and published prices: standard listing free; Product Technical Statement blocks NZ$500 each for Masterspec Product Partners (first block free) → $500/$1,000/$1,500; non-partners NZ$1,200 for the first block → $1,700/$2,200/$2,700. Ex GST, 12-month minimum. Note the bundling incentive — cheaper if you already pay Masterspec. The PTS field list is essentially the BPIR schema plus certificates, NZBC evidence, CodeMark/appraisals and a validation date.
• EBOSS (NZ) — 5,300 products, proprietary categories (Structure/Enclosure/Interior/Finish/Services/External), quote-based, co-runs the free BPIR Ready tool.
• Productspec (NZ) — supplier portal + "BIM & CAD Services", proprietary categories.
• Design Content (A2K) — NATSPEC's named "most prominent Australian object library". designcontent.com.au is now a generic content-farm blog; the corporate page 403s. Appears defunct.
• RubySketch (AU) — PlusSpec / BIMBits, SketchUp-centric, managed manufacturer work. ANZRS — community Revit standard from RTC 2009, adopted by KarelCAD/DesignContent, Benn Design and Productspec; dormant.
• buildingSMART Australasia — chapter since 1997, but zero AU dictionaries in bSDD. AU-linked owners are RMIT University (11) and Lendlease (6).

Market size, bottom-up

Structural problem: there is no ANZSIC class for tiles, and none for lighting. ANZSIC 4212 Floor Coverings Retailing explicitly excludes ceramic floor tiles, which sit in 4231 Hardware & Building Supplies with Bunnings; ceramic tile wholesaling sits in 3339. IBISWorld inherits the gap — there is no "Tile Wholesaling in Australia" report at all.

ABS Business Counts, 30 June 2025 (cat. 8165.0, released 16 Dec 2025) — total / $2m+ turnover:

IBISWorld corroboration: Floor Covering Retailing AUD 3.7bn / 2,049 businesses; Furniture & Floor Covering Wholesaling 6.6bn / 1,832; Electrical & Lighting Stores 2.8bn / 1,802; Ceramic Product Manufacturing 791.5m / 452 — with "imports accounting for a high share of industry revenue". The AU tile trade is an import trade.

Addressable: ~1,500–2,000 AU businesses at $2m+; ~1,800–2,450 including NZ; working number ~2,000. Full universe including sub-$2m: ~6,000–9,000. NSW leads wholesale and import, Victoria retail — consistent with Sydney as the import gateway.

The organised supply side is tiny. The Australian Tile Council (50+ years, "Australia's only recognised tile industry representative") claims members represent ~70% of all tiles sold. Its live directory shows 140 members: Tile Merchant 45, Contractor 31, Other 21, Consultant 14, Builder 11, Wholesaler 6, Manufacturer 5, Industry Supplier 4 — so the entire organised supply side is ≈51 merchants and wholesalers plus 5 manufacturers. Membership AUD 150–330/yr. By state: QLD 36, NSW 35, VIC 32, SA 28, WA 28. NZ: New Zealand Tile Council 52 members; TANZ ~197 listings (~100 genuine independents); FloorNZ 314; Lighting Council NZ 25.

(Correction: ATTIA is the Australian Tea Tree Industry Association. There is no "Australian Tile and Terrazzo Industry Association" — an earlier research brief invented it.)

Per-retailer ecommerce platform audit

Measured by fetching each site and matching platform markers.

• Magento 2 (data-mage-init, mage/cookies): Amber Tiles, National Tiles, Beaumont Tiles, Beacon Lighting
• Shopify (cdn.shopify.com): TileCloud, Earp Bros, Cult Design
• WooCommerce: Signorino, Tile Factory Outlet
• No storefront detected (catalogue/brochure only): Artedomus, Academy Tiles, Di Lorenzo, Skheme, Surface Gallery, Living Edge

Pattern: large AU chains run Magento/Adobe Commerce; newer DTC and mid-size importers run Shopify; WordPress/Woo covers those that grew out of a brochure site; several premium importers sell entirely offline.

Consequence: the Cin7-to-Shopify gap does not reach the biggest AU players — they are on Magento, where Cin7 also drops attributes. A Shopify-first product addresses a subset of a subset.

What could NOT be established

• Not public: GS1 NPC subscription; CodeMark and WaterMark certification; GBCA Responsible Products recognition; Global GreenTag; NATSPEC Product Partner fee; Archify, Masterspec, EBOSS and Productspec supplier programmes.
• Whether Australia has a BPIR-equivalent mandate in progress — none found, but the web-search budget was exhausted before ABCB could be checked directly.
• Current state of ETIM Australia — site unreachable; which of the four sectors it covers is not published.
• Whether Design Content (A2K) still operates in any form.
• Lighting-specific data standards beyond ETIM.