Congestion crisis highlights urgent need for New Zealand coastal shipping

The Mar­itime Union says the devel­op­ing cri­sis of con­ges­tion and delays is being made worse by a lack of New Zealand based coastal ship­ping in the freight space.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Craig Har­ri­son says there are mul­ti­ple com­pound­ing stress points in the sys­tem, the lat­est of which was in truck­ing delays affect­ing the South Island.

Mr Har­ri­son says these are the result of bad pol­i­cy deci­sions over a long peri­od which had led to the run­down of New Zealand coastal ship­ping.

“The prob­lem is not so much a short­age of truck dri­vers, the prob­lem is an imbal­ance in our sys­tem.”

He says New Zealand was strug­gling with unre­li­able over­seas ship­ping sched­ules due to the glob­al sit­u­a­tion.

This had built up a back­log and placed great stress on the sys­tem, and delays and ship­ping con­ges­tion charges were becom­ing a major drag on the econ­o­my, he says.

The sit­u­a­tion had now been com­pound­ed by staff short­ages as Omi­cron vari­ant COVID swept through the coun­try, and the lat­est shock of war in the Ukraine which had intro­duced a major risk fac­tor to our sup­ply chains.

Mr Har­ri­son says it was now appar­ent the Gov­ern­ment need­ed to step in, and devel­op a New Zealand focused ship­ping line that could use char­tered ves­sels to relieve the pres­sure on the sys­tem and tar­get the needs of New Zealan­ders.

He says that small­er to medi­um sized importers and exporters were strug­gling while big oper­a­tors had the capa­bil­i­ty to char­ter their own ves­sels.

Mr Har­ri­son says New Zealand flagged and crewed ships could pro­vide a reg­u­lar and reli­able ser­vice con­nect­ing region­al ports with major inter­na­tion­al hub ports, thus reliev­ing con­ges­tion.

He says hav­ing New Zealand flagged and crewed ships pro­vid­ed a lev­el of secu­ri­ty and could also be used on region­al or inter­na­tion­al runs in the Asia Pacif­ic region if required.

“The demand is obvi­ous­ly there, this is a cri­sis, and there is every indi­ca­tion that the glob­al sit­u­a­tion is going to remain a com­plex and chal­leng­ing one.”

Mr Har­ri­son says the Union is also cam­paign­ing for the reten­tion of New Zealand coastal fuel tankers, which are under threat of removal in April due to prof­it-dri­ven deci­sions by petrol com­pa­nies.

He says New Zealand has left itself open to sup­ply chain chaos in a volatile glob­al sit­u­a­tion and had to move quick­ly to repo­si­tion itself and build a resilient trans­port sec­tor.

“We now need to move away from the ‘just in time’ approach, to the ‘just in case’ approach in sup­ply chains and trans­port.”