In a coup for NHNZ, the Dunedin-based television company has been chosen by documentary heavyweight National Geographic to archive and sell more than two decades of footage.
The deal will see thousands of hours of footage added to NHNZ Moving Images collections, as it becomes the exclusive agent for National Geographic Channels Worldwide.
NHNZ's Moving Images manager Caroline Cook said the images had not been available before and it was a "coup" for the business unit to have been chosen by the company.
Under the business model, National Geographic would earn a royalty on the sale of any content, which was sold by the second.
Buyers would be able to view low-resolution footage on NHNZ's stock footage website, which was launched this year, before deciding whether or not to buy.
Six staff worked in the Dunedin-based archive, which already held more than 200,000 hours of footage, and more jobs were likely as thousands of clips were added to the stock footage library, she said.
National Geographic Channel global content sales vice-president Germaine Deagan Sweet said the partnership was an opportunity to increase revenue streams through licensing.
"National Geographic Channel has a long-standing reputation for brilliant, high-quality imagery, and we wanted to provide producers with a broader opportunity to access the incredible breadth of our inventory with footage that has captivated audiences worldwide.
"NHNZ's Moving Images was a natural fit for this."
The collection spans genres ranging from natural history to engineering.
