The Kiwis, who triumphed at the Cape Town leg in December, won all three of their Pool C matches at the FMG Stadium Waikato.

They started their campaign with a 52-7 win over France as co-captain Scott Curry registered a brace and Tim Mikkelson scored his 1,000th World Rugby Sevens Series point.  

New Zealand then beat Scotland 24-5, with Mikkelson moving himself to within one try of reaching a century in the World Rugby Sevens Series, before overcoming Argentina 17-12.

The home team trailed the Argentines 12-5 at the break, but they hit back with two tries.

Joe Webber's final conversion meant that the points difference in Pool C finished in Scotland's favour and they progressed into the last eight as runners-up ahead of Argentina.

Scotland, Argentina and France all finished on five points.

Vilimoni Koroi was New Zealand's leading points scorer on day one with 24.

He is hopeful they can improve on their performance at last week’s World Rugby Sevens Series event in Sydney, where they were beaten by eventual winners and hosts Australia in the quarter-finals before going on to clinch fifth place.

"We didn't get the result that we wanted last week so we've come into this week with a lot of detail about what we wanted to achieve," Koroi said.

"It really showed in our first two games but Argentina really took it to the wire in that last game which really gave us a wake-up call for tomorrow."

Awaiting New Zealand in the quarter-finals are England, who finished second in Pool B behind unbeaten South Africa.

Fiji and Kenya were the two other teams to go through the opening phase without suffering defeat and they finished top of Pools A and D respectively.

Standing between Fiji and a place in the semi-finals are Pool D runners-up Samoa, while Kenya face a last-eight encounter with Australia, the second-place finishers in Pool A.

The other quarter-final pits South Africa against Scotland.

All four ties are scheduled to take place tomorrow and will be followed by the semi-finals and final.

The Challenge Trophy quarter-finals will see Wales face Canada, Argentina meet Russia, the United States go up against Spain and Papua New Guinea do battle with France.

The World Rugby Sevens Series is stopping in Hamilton for the first time after moving from Wellington, where it had been hosted since 2000.