Tauranga readies port for surge

By ROB O'NEILL

Port of Tauranga is gearing up to handle growing container throughput generated from its Auckland Metroport.

The port has bought three new straddle carriers, at around $1 million each, to be operated by Cargo Company, a joint venture between Port of Tauranga and Owens Group.

In the six months to December, the first period to see business from its new South Auckland Metroport appear, Tauranga's container volumes increased 124 per cent.

Increased commodity traffic also helped the port to a 39 per cent profit boost for the year.

Port of Tauranga chief executive Jon Mayson said yesterday that container volumes could exceed 200,000 this year. That was up from 112,000 for the year to December 1999 and 94,000 in 1998.

"It continues at the same mad volume," he said.

The port now runs three gantry cranes and a fleet of 12 straddle carriers at its Sulphur Point terminal.

Three engineers were sent from the Finnish company SISU to assemble the port's new straddle carriers, which come in 10-piece kitsets and take around six days each to assemble.

Competition between Tauranga and Ports of Auckland has been fierce, and saw Auckland respond to Metroport with further restructuring to reduce operating costs. Among other measures it has managed to introduce differential pay rates for different skill levels among its waterside workforce.

Metroport is Tauranga's answer to unbalanced import and export demand at its own port and in Auckland. Import volumes are much higher in Auckland than exports, while in Tauranga exports are higher than imports. That means ships can be full one way and near empty the other, a situation shipping companies try to avoid.

Ports of Auckland addressed the issue by seeking primary export cargoes from the upper half of the North Island, including Tauranga's Bay of Plenty base.

Stung by this, Tauranga came to Auckland with Metroport, which allows container imports to arrive at Tauranga and be trans-shipped to Auckland by rail.

It immediately won Ports of Auckland's second-biggest customer, Australia-New Zealand Direct Line, which accounted for around 10 per cent of the port's container traffic.

Despite that loss, growing volumes meant that Auckland's container volumes declined by just 1 per cent in the six months to December.