Manunui (Māori: Mananui) is a small Whanganui River settlement, about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) east of Taumarunui on State Highway 4, in New Zealand's King Country.

[2] Ellis and Burnand opened a sawmill in Manunui in 1901, specialising in milling kahikatea to make boxes of its odourless wood for the butter export industry.

[3] After the North Island Main Trunk Railway reached the settlement in 1903, the mill grew to be the largest in the region.

[2] Manunui became a manufacturing and farming centre as the native forest around it was milled and cleared.

At one point it was a town district (requiring a population of at least 500; the population was 515 in 1911[4]), but merged back with Taumarunui county in the late 1970s; today is functionally a suburb of Taumarunui.