KEY POINTS:
Shipping giant Maersk New Zealand is weighing up the implications of today's news that Port of Tauranga and Ports of Auckland are considering a merger.
Maersk was expected to make a decision this week on what ports it would call on after expressing a wish in August for greater rationalisation among ports.
Today, Maersk NZ's managing director Tony Gibson said it was a complex proposal and Maersk was yet to form a view on its implications for shipping services or its customers.
He said it remained to be seen whether the proposal assisted or threatened its goals.
"Our goal remains to help our New Zealand customers create the most efficient supply chain possible to reach their international markets."
>> Background: Facts and figures about the two ports
>> Merger of Auckland and Tauranga ports 'logical'
However, fears that a merger will lessen competition and efficiencies were expressed by the Importers Institute's secretary Daniel Silva.
"There is a risk that if they do merge or amalgamate, the owners of the ports - which is the regional council - will be very tempted to run them like in the old days as a monopoly," he told Radio NZ.
Maersk, which has 40 per cent of the New Zealand market, has said it ideally would like to see two ports, one in each island, as primary calling points.
Ports of Auckland ceo Geoff Vazey believes it is somewhat inevitable that more of New Zealand's ports will consider merging.
"Rather peculiar that a nation of 4 million is served by 14 individual ports," he told Radio NZ.
"It may well eventuate into... say, three or four groups of ports, and those groups would certainly compete with one another."
Most of the ports are still local council-owned. Christchurch mayor Garry Moore said in August that if the shipping stopped using Lyttelton and other smaller ports they might have to shut.
But the CEO of Port Lyttelton, Peter Davy, said that it hoped today's news was the start of greater rationalisation.
Lyttelton has already sought a merger with its major South Island rival, Port of Otago. But the Dunedin port has since taken a 15 per cent blocking stake in Lyttelton, scuppering a deal it had sought with global port company Hutchison.
If the port industry did consolidate, smaller local ports might still have a viable future in specialist shipping up and down the coast, Mr Davy said.
However, an analyst said today that smaller port companies such as Wellington's Centreport were at risk of drowning in the big players' wakes.
It was hard to get solid investment into ports, when there was a threat of each of them closing down.
The Northern Employers and Manufacturers Association said the merger made sense, and would hopefully give the two ports the critical mass to be less dependent on big shipping lines.
"While the issue of competition is important, most port customers realise the dominant shipping companies are currently capturing substantial benefits at present by playing the two ports off against each other," chief executive Alasdair Thompson said.
Mr Thompson said if New Zealand did not develop one port of international scale to accommodate bigger ships, it risked seeing its containers being shipped via Australia.
The plan could also allow the regional councils which own the ports to to rationalise their dominant ownership .
They could retain ownership of operating land and surplus land for redevelopment, but publicly float the combined port company, freeing up ratepayers' capital and creating another listed company for public investment.
- NZPA
