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.”