New shipping service holds bold potential

A big container ship slipped into Port Taranaki last week to herald what promises to be a new age in trans-Tasman shipping operations.

The ship, the 30,900-tonne MSC Krittika, arrived from Wellington to drop off a consignment of empty containers to be filled by exporters from throughout the lower North Island.

But even the big vessel's arrival doesn't look to have satisfied initial demand for container slots aboard the new service by the Mediterranean Shipping Company, which officially starts in the first week of March.

"We've having to cobble together empty containers from all over the place," Port Taranaki chief executive Roy Weaver said.

"There's been very good initial response to the announcement the MSC trans-Tasman service is about to start - so much so, in fact, that we loaded some export cargo aboard the Krittika on the drop-off visit."

Earlier this month MSC, one of the world's largest container shipping companies, announced it was adding Port Taranaki to its New Zealand service. Significantly, the New Plymouth port is the company's last port of call before its ships head across the Tasman to Sydney and Melbourne. It is this that provides Port Taranaki with the opportunity to grow its trans- Tasman business, Mr Weaver said. "We all know that Fonterra has decided to take half its Taranaki dairy product elsewhere to other ports where it can catch the really big container ships sailing to Asia. The Australian trade doesn't use the really big ships - what it needs is frequency. Twelve months ago we didn't have any trans-Tasman service, but now we've got three shipping companies providing a total of nine crossings every month."

Mr Weaver said it was now up to the port company and exporters to take advantage of that. "It has all the potential to be a lovely balanced trade, with similar numbers of imports and exports," he said.

"The gains for Taranaki exporters, by being able to get their product to Australia in just three days instead of having to first rail it to another port somewhere else in the North Island, are potentially immense."

- © Fairfax NZ News