WELLINGTON, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Higher sales volumes for petroleum and coal product manufacturing helped boost manufacturing in the December 2017 quarter, New Zealand's statistics department Stats NZ said on Thursday.

The total volume of manufacturing sales rose 1 percent in the December 2017 quarter compared with the September 2017 quarter, which followed a 0.4- percent rise in the September 2017 quarter, Stats NZ said.

Seven of the 13 manufacturing industries saw sales rise in the December 2017 quarter. The largest movements were petroleum and coal product manufacturing, up 17 percent, and meat and dairy product manufacturing, down 2.8 percent, it said.

"The December 2017 quarter's rise in petroleum and coal product manufacturing follows falls in the June and September quarters," manufacturing manager Sue Chapman said in a statement.

This is the largest percentage rise since December 2008, and the third-largest since the series began, Chapman said, adding the predominant activities in the industry include automotive fuel manufacturing, aviation fuel manufacturing, oil manufacturing, and petroleum refining and blending.

Meat and dairy product manufacturing sales seasonally fell in the December 2017 quarter, with sales volumes down 2.8 percent, which followed a 0.7-percent fall in the September quarter, statistics show.

The actual volume of total manufacturing sales was up 1.4 percent from the previous December quarter, with the value of manufacturing sales being 29.6 billion NZ dollars (21.6 billion U.S. dollars) in the December 2017 quarter, up 2.7 billion NZ dollars from the December 2016 quarter, Stats NZ said. (1 NZ dollar equals to 0.73 U.S. dollar)