New Zealand coastal shipping boost “biggest turnaround this century”

The Mar­itime Union says suc­cess­ful fund­ing out­comes for coastal ship­ping are a game chang­er for New Zealand ship­ping and the biggest turn­around for the indus­try this cen­tu­ry.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Craig Har­ri­son says the out­come will see four or more New Zealand oper­at­ed ships come into ser­vice on the New Zealand coast.

He says the new ships will have a sub­stan­tial pos­i­tive impact on New Zealand’s sup­ply chain cri­sis as well as pro­vid­ing envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits.

Mr Har­ri­son says it is essen­tial the new ships are New Zealand flagged and New Zealand crewed to build resilience and capa­bil­i­ty in the ship­ping sec­tor.

Min­is­ter of Trans­port Michael Wood announced on 24 May 2022 the Gov­ern­ment had com­mit­ted $30 mil­lion of fund­ing for coastal ship­ping fund­ing through the Nation­al Land Trans­port Pro­gramme (NLTP) to improve domes­tic ship­ping ser­vices, reduce emis­sions, improve effi­cien­cy and upgrade mar­itime infra­struc­ture.

Waka Kotahi worked with the wider freight indus­try to select four appli­cants for co-invest­ment in new and enhanced coastal ship­ping ser­vices through the NLTP.

The four suc­cess­ful appli­cants were Coastal Bulk Ship­ping Ltd, Move Inter­na­tion­al Ltd, Swire Ship­ping NZ Ltd and Aotearoa Ship­ping Alliance.

Mr Har­ri­son says after decades of neglect, New Zealand coastal ship­ping had turned a cor­ner and could now begin to ful­fil its poten­tial.

The Mar­itime Union had rela­tion­ships with sev­er­al of the oper­a­tors and would work to ensure crews were avail­able.

Mr Har­ri­son says fur­ther invest­ment in train­ing and skills for a new gen­er­a­tion of New Zealand sea­far­ers was an impor­tant aspect of rebuild­ing the indus­try.

He says it is essen­tial that a mar­itime trad­ing nation like New Zealand had ship­ping capa­bil­i­ty and skilled sea­far­ers in an increas­ing­ly volatile glob­al sit­u­a­tion.

Coastal ship­ping was a low car­bon emis­sion trans­port mode, so pro­vid­ed envi­ron­men­tal as well as eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits.

When the new ship­ping ser­vices are ful­ly oper­a­tional, the Gov­ern­ment esti­mates they will remove around 35 mil­lion kilo­me­tres of truck trav­el from New Zealand’s road­ing net­work every year.