Three ports tipped as supership stops

By PAM GRAHAM

Ports of Auckland, Port of Napier and Port Chalmers are expected to be named within days as destinations for P&O Nedlloyd's weekly fixed-day "supership" service to Europe.

Trading in Port of Lyttelton shares was halted yesterday amid reports it had missed out.

From December, P&O Nedlloyd, a joint venture between P&O and Royal Nedlloyd, will run the world's biggest refrigerated container ships on its services from New Zealand to Europe. They will carry as much as 64 per cent more cargo than older vessels and take 70 days to travel around the world, reducing the journey by 14 days.

"Most shipping lines are still struggling to make money. With the global economy slowing down it's very hard to lift their rates, so what they have to do is look at their cost base," said Nat Vallabh, portfolio manager and senior analyst at AMP Henderson.

"For the port companies it's quite a major impact on those that do lose."

Lyttelton shares traded at $1.56, the lowest in a year, before being halted.

Still, P&O Nedlloyd is expected to look at ways of feeding traffic to the three selected ports to avoid losing business to competitors.

It will still use a range of ports for other services.

The idea of the new service "is to get into key ports and get the import cargo discharged, the export cargo loaded, and get off again as quick as possible", said Shipping Gazette commentator Dave MacIntyre.

The Ports of Auckland group manager of corporate affairs, Bronwyn Jones, said the port had not received formal notification.

The existing P&O Nedlloyd services call at Auckland, Napier, Wellington's Centreport, Lyttelton and Port Chalmers, but Port of Tauranga also put in a proposal.

Centreport chief executive Ken Harris said P&O Nedlloyd had told the company on Sunday that it had missed out but had since been advised that the notification might be wrong.