Buoyant month for major ports

By DANIEL RIORDAN

The country's biggest export port, Tauranga, and its biggest import port (by value), Auckland, have reported a buoyant month of May.

A continued rise in forestry exports has helped the Port of Tauranga break records for ship calls and volumes. Extra container ships were added to the schedules of some of the regular shipping lines to cope with additional seasonal volumes.

It had 122 vessel calls for the month, compared with 112 in May last year. Records were set for container volumes (up 5 per cent) and non-containerised (breakbulk) volumes, up 0.3 per cent.

Although trade often peaks in May, the Port of Tauranga said this year's volumes were higher than had been expected.

Ports of Auckland's container volumes rose 6 per cent for the year to May 31, and were 11 per cent higher for May compared with last year.

The company said that, though the rate of growth had slowed a little, the trend had remained positive.

Import container volumes were up 11 per cent month-to-month and up 3 per cent for the year.

Export container volumes were down 3 per cent for May, but up 1 per cent for the year.

Auckland's breakbulk volumes fell 20 per cent month-to-month but were 13 per cent higher for the year.