Brisbane new Cosco hub

By Yoke Har Lee

Shipping line Cosco New Zealand is now using Brisbane as its Australasian transshipment hub in a bid to sharpen operations for shipments to Asia.

It has also decided to resume calling at the Port of Tauranga and the Port of Napier after announcing in February that those two services would be phased out.

National sales and marketing manager Owen Emery told the Business Herald that when the carrier decided to make the changes, it was unsure how clients might react.

"We like to think it is innovative, a little scary but more innovative than scary."

Why Brisbane? "That has been something that puzzled many of our customers. Australia has a bad reputation. The logic behind this is we want to remain an independent carrier in the Australasian market. Having this would mean an Asian/Australasian market as one area, operating as a circle."

"[Our customers'] view is we don't care how you do it or what you do with the configurations, just make your service reliable."