Canterbury of New Zealand

Canterbury of New Zealand is a UK-based sports clothing company that focuses mainly on rugby football. The company is named after the Canterbury region in New Zealand where the company started to make knitwear. Other than producing rugby kits, the brand is also known for their rugby protective wear such as headgear and pads, and rugby boots. The company also manufactures and markets lifestyle clothing.

Contents

• National teams
• Associations
• Representative
• Club
• Australian Rules Football
• Universities
• Former sponsorships
• References

The brand's tagline is "Committed To The Game". Its logo is the silhouettes of three birds (Kiwi) on three solid circular backgrounds creating the letters CCC; the initials of the Canterbury Clothing Company.

The brand is distributed widely among rugby-playing nations. The head office was formerly based in the city of Christchurch in Canterbury in the South Island, but has now moved to Stockport, UK. There are operations in Brisbane, Australia; Emeryville, USA and Manchester, UK. The brand is also manufactured and marketed in Japan under licence by Canterbury of New Zealand Japan. In 2006, Canterbury sold its South African operations to investment group House of Monatic, which set up Canterbury South Africa to run these operations under licence.

In March 2012 it was announced that Canterbury had won the England Rugby Shirt contract from Nike, and in September 2012 they launched the new England kit range.

The European arm, Canterbury Europe Ltd, based in Stockport, was purchased by JD Sports in 2009, then sold on in 2012 to sports and fashion retail group Pentland Group for £22.7m. Following Petr Čech's head injury in 2006, Canterbury supplied his protective rugby-style helmet until adidas decided they would supply the helmet.