A dead baby has been found at an Auckland recycling centre. The baby is believed to have been a newborn.

Police were called to the Visy Recycling Centre in Onehunga on Monday night. They are continuing to work to identify and locate the mother of the child, saying she likely needs urgent medical attention.

Detective Inspector Scott Beard says officers have a significant amount of work to try and establish how the baby got there.

He says it will involve trawling through hours of CCTV footage.

Police want to hear from anyone who knows anything about the baby or its mother.

A postmortem will be carried out tomorrow.