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.