Bunnings Warehouse is introducing facial recognition technology to combat what it says is a rising number of thefts and threatening incidents.
The hardware retailer will use the technology (FRT) to map the features of all customers who enter its stores.
Only the faces of those involved in a previous incident will be stored and kept to create a database that will help staff identify repeat offenders.
Bunnings New Zealand general manager Melissa Haines said the introduction of FRT will help protect customers and team members from violence, abuse and intimidation.
“The scale of retail crime in New Zealand is accelerating and shows no signs of stopping,” Haines said. “Repeat offenders now account for 34% of all threatening incidents, up from 26% in 2022, meaning they are driving much of this harm.”
With harm in stores doubling over the past four years, she believes the controversial system “adds one more layer to the safety tools we are already using, such as security guards, team member training, body‑worn cameras and serious incident response processes”.
Bunnings will initially roll out the technology in its Te Rapa and Hamilton South stores next month before eventually expanding nationwide.
New Zealand Council of Civil Liberties chairman Thomas Beagle told the Herald those affected won’t necessarily have agreed to the intrusion upon their privacy.
“It’s capturing anyone who walks past. It’s capturing customers of Bunnings, it’s capturing people who aren’t customers of Bunnings who are just walking by. It’s capturing children.
“With facial recognition and then AI analysis of it, we’re suddenly turning footage into data about individual people.”
Foodstuffs trialled similar technology for seven months in 2024, the results of which informed a 2025 inquiry by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC).
“The risks of overcollection, scope creep, surveillance, misidentification and bias are well documented,” the report reads. “Biometric technologies such as facial recognition also capture unchangeable aspects of who we are.”
Finding the supermarket chain had complied with the Privacy Act, the OPC established clear guidelines for when the use of FRT is permissible.
Retailers must show it is necessary to implement the system and that there are no better alternatives.
Several Pak’nSave and New World stores around the country continue to use FRT but must follow key privacy safeguards, such as deleting non-matching images immediately.
Haines said the decision to introduce facial recognition at Bunnings has not been made quickly and involved careful consideration of the Privacy Commissioner’s findings.
“We’ve undertaken a thorough assessment process, with privacy, safety and community expectations at the forefront, and we are taking a phased approach to get this right.”
The retailer said it has also incorporated Tikanga Māori principles in its approach after consulting a Māori sovereignty expert.
But Beagle said the current Privacy Act can do little to stop businesses from expanding their use of surveillance-style technology.
“The Privacy Commission when they passed the biometric code basically gave all retailers and anyone else carte blanche to roll out facial recognition systems,” he said, with scope to “go a lot further”.
“They just have to look at the biometric code, come up with a justification, which is why they want to do it and why it’s a good idea to do it this particular way, and then that gives them the permission that they need.”
He suspects facial recognition will move in the same direction as automated number plate recognition, a tool that has been monetised by vendors and made accessible to police.
While the widespread use of CCTV has normalised the concept of constant observation in public spaces, he said privacy legislation is yet to catch up.
“Our Privacy Act was really quite well done when it was done, and it tried to take a technologically neutral point of view,” he said. “But I think it’s not really ready for the age of mass surveillance.”