New container service sees New Zealand shipping going from strength to strength

The Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and says New Zea­l­and coastal ship­ping is on an unpre­ced­en­ted growth curve as anoth­er New Zea­l­and crewed ship comes onto the New Zea­l­and coast.

Paci­fica Ship­ping has announced a new 1300-TEU con­tain­er ves­sel MV Tak­u­tai Chief will start on an inter-island run on 19 Septem­ber between a num­ber of New Zea­l­and ports.

The ves­sel will com­ple­ment the exist­ing Paci­fica con­tain­er ship MV Moana Chief.

Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and Nation­al Sec­ret­ary Craig Har­ris­on says new ship­ping ser­vices would provide links between region­al ports and lar­ger ports, and great­er resi­li­ence in the sup­ply chain.

“These ser­vices will provide a low car­bon, reli­able option for freight that will help solve con­ges­tion in ports and over­come the cur­rent delays and unre­li­ab­il­ity of inter­na­tion­al ship­ping.”

He says the resur­gence in coastal ship­ping was due to a pos­it­ive and pro­act­ive approach by Min­is­ter of Trans­port Michael Wood and the Gov­ern­ment in their ship­ping policy.

Mr Har­ris­on says the Mari­time Uni­on was part­ner­ing with Gov­ern­ment, industry and train­ing pro­viders to cre­ate oppor­tun­it­ies for train­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of New Zea­l­and sea­farers.

He says pre­vi­ous short-sighted ideo­logy in past dec­ades had under­mined New Zea­l­and coastal ship­ping but the situ­ation had changed com­pletely over the last two years, as the glob­al shock of COVID and a volat­ile inter­na­tion­al situ­ation dis­rup­ted sup­ply chains.

The announce­ment of Gov­ern­ment fund­ing sup­port to four oper­at­ors to intro­duce new coastal ship­ping ser­vices, includ­ing Paci­fica, had made a game chan­ging dif­fer­ence to the sec­tor in 2022.

In addi­tion to Paci­fica and three oth­er oper­at­ors who received fund­ing sup­port, glob­al ship­per Maersk have intro­duced a new ded­ic­ated New Zea­l­and coastal ser­vice, Maersk Coastal Con­nect, with two New Zea­l­and crewed con­tain­er ships.