New coastal shipping report welcomed

The Mar­itime Union has wel­comed a new report on coastal ship­ping released today by Min­is­ter of Trans­port the Hon. Michael Wood.

The Coastal Ship­ping Invest­ment Approach State-of-Play report was com­mis­sioned by Waka Kotahi NZ Trans­port Agency, to help deter­mine pri­or­i­ties for $30 mil­lion of fund­ing ear­marked for coastal ship­ping in the 2021–24 Nation­al Land Trans­port Pro­gramme (NLTP).

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Craig Har­ri­son says the report has drawn on a wide range of input from the mar­itime indus­try and iden­ti­fied impor­tant areas for work.

He says it is good to see core issues being iden­ti­fied, includ­ing the need for prac­ti­cal mea­sures to build the coastal ship­ping mode up to its poten­tial.

“Issues such as a nation­al ports strat­e­gy and the impor­tance of sup­ply chain secu­ri­ty are high­light­ed in this report, which the Mar­itime Union endors­es.”

Mr Har­ri­son says that the impor­tant step now is to quick­ly advance prac­ti­cal out­comes from the report, as New Zealand was in the mid­dle of a glob­al sup­ply chain cri­sis.

He says he is con­cerned that Mars­den Point mov­ing from a refin­ery to an import ter­mi­nal could take New Zealand coastal tankers off the coast.

“This would be mov­ing in exact­ly the oppo­site direc­tion to the rec­om­men­da­tions of this report, so the Gov­ern­ment needs to take action on ensur­ing New Zealand coastal tankers remain in ser­vice.”

Mr Har­ri­son says the Mar­itime Union is in reg­u­lar dis­cus­sions with ship­ping oper­a­tors to build our coastal ship­ping capa­bil­i­ty.