Shipping firm adds Port Taranaki stop

Beleagured Port Taranaki finally received some good news yesterday - one of the world's largest shipping companies is adding the New Plymouth port to its New Zealand service.

While the arrival of Mediterranean Shipping Company won't make up for the big trade hit the port suffered last year when diary giant Fonterra dropped it from its South-East Asian service, it is still likely to involve substantial numbers of containers.

Significantly, MSC is adding Port Taranaki into its schedule as the final port of call prior to heading to Sydney, which opens up new trade opportunities for exporters from the lower North Island.

Yesterday Port Taranaki chief executive Roy Weaver hailed MSC's decision as excellent news, because it means the port not now has three trans-Tasman services whereas 12 months ago there was none.

"In the wake of our losing the South-East Asian trade, that's where we see our container shipping future - to Australia and North Asia.

"There's a lot of hard work now needing to be done to ensure the MSC service is a success," he said, adding that Taranaki, Wanganui and Manawatu were seen as the prime regions as source of the export product.

MSC's Christchurch-based national operations manager Mike Hodgins, in New Plymouth yesterday to finalise the new service, said two vessels will arrive at Port Taranaki every three weeks.

The first ship to visit the port will be the 30,971 gross registered tonne MSC Krittika which will berth late to next week to unload empty containers for distributions throughout the southern North Island. Then the first scheduled visit will be in the first week of March when a second ship, the 34,231grt MSC Palermo, will berth.

Port Taranaki will be the final port of call after the ships visit Nelson, Auckland, Tauranga, Lyttelton and Wellington.

"They will then head to Sydney and Melbourne, where cargoes can be trans- shipped to anywhere in the world," said Mr Hodgins.

He was confident that a minimum of 400 containers will be loaded onto the MSC ships at each call.

Yesterday's announcement represents good news for the port company as it works to recover from a 35 per cent fall in container numbers as a result of Fonterra's decision to drop the port as the point of export for its SE Asian-bound product from Whareroa, and rail it to Auckland, Tauranga and Napier for export instead.

At the time of Fonterra's announcement late last year, it was estimated container numbers through the port would fall by 22,000.

- © Fairfax NZ News