WELLINGTON: Port of Tauranga says it is still on the hunt for more freight “hubs” to add to its growing network. The port, which already has two inland hubs in Auckland and one in Canterbury, has been locked in a battle with Ports of Auckland to expand its freight catchment outside its traditional region. Chief executive Mark Cairns said it was possible the port would open more. “We are looking at another North Island site at the moment,” he said. “I prefer not to say where location-wise but we generally lock in a large customer before we make investments in those sites.” The port said on Thursday that its first half profit for the six months to December 31 had risen 8.5 per cent to $41.9 million. Container volumes rose “significantly” by 8 per cent, thanks to a growing number of big ship visits. Tauranga is the only port of call for the Maersk Aotea, the largest freight ship to come to New Zealand – and Hamburg Sud is starting a weekly peak-time service in March.
To enable the visits, the port has spent $350m on dredging and infrastructure and Cairns said it was now seeing the resultsMore than half a million TEUs or twenty foot containers had going through the port during the period and it was on track to handle a million containers by the end of the year, a New Zealand record.
Tauranga – which also handles a large proportion of the North Island’s dairy exports, logs and primary produce – saw export volumes increase by 9 per cent. This was boosted by a large recovery in log exports, which make up about 30 to 40 per cent of its export business. Cairns said the recovery appeared to be due to a sawmill failure in Rotorua and increasing volumes of maturing trees. Further economies of scale were coming from Coda, its joint venture with logistics firm Kotari, which was reducing the number of empty rail and truck containers. The damage done by the Seddon and Kaikoura earthquakes had raised fresh questions of whether freight was better handled by road, rail or coastal shipping.
Cairns predicted the current rise in coastal shipping and trans-shipments would continue. A fan of rationalising the country’s ports system, Cairns said he did not favour shutting any ports but some should be turned into “feeder ports”. “I think if you look at our freight task across New Zealand, we don’t need 13 international container hub ports, you couldn’t afford to invest that way.” Port of Tauranga predicted its full-year earnings would be at the upper end of the $79m to $83m range it has forecast.
