Container ships drop direct calls at three ports

A container ship arriving at CentrePort, Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell.

The main container shipping service between New Zealand and North Asia is axing direct calls at the ports of New Plymouth, Wellington, and Nelson.

Erratic scheduling had disrupted the service, operated jointly by Cosco Container Lines, Hamburg Sud, NYK Line and Mitsui OSK Lines, the companies said today on the Cosco website.

A port rotation of six North Asia ports and six in New Zealand was "very challenging", leaving little contingency time in the event of inevitable weather delays or other unforeseen difficulties, the companies said.

Local company Pacifica Shipping, which operates two container vessels on scheduled coastal runs is likely to benefit from the axing of the three ports.

Pacifica's 3850 tonne Spirit of Resolution will replace calls by Cosco's Yingkou at New Plymouth, and the 7430 tonne Spirit of Endurance will make feeder calls at Nelson, and Wellington.

Nelson was previously serviced by the ACX Diamond.

Today the companies said that to rebuild a reliable service between New Zealand and North Asia, decisive corrective action had to be taken.

"We will no longer call directly at the ports of New Plymouth, and Wellington, but will instead offer a reliable weekly feeder connection using Pacifica's coastal service in its place."

Port Nelson would also be covered via Pacifica's coastal service from September 13, the company said.

The Nelson service would improve from fortnightly to every Monday.

When the consortium's schedules were rationalised last year, it dropped fortnightly visits to Dunedin's Port Chalmers in favour of stopping at Lyttelton.

At that time it was the third shipping operator to reduce southern services in a year. In August 2008, Maersk, Port Otago's largest customer, announced it was cancelling 104 ship calls from September, followed a month later by Hapag Lloyd quitting its weekly call to Port Chalmers,

Dunedin-owned Pacifica then resumed a domestic service out of Port Chalmers -- having dropped it in 2005 - to link with Lyttelton, Tauranga and Auckland.

- NZPA