Withdrawal of proposed service threatens coastal shipping progress

The Mar­itime Union is con­cerned coastal ship­ping progress is stalling after the can­cel­la­tion of a pro­posed new ship­ping ser­vice link­ing region­al New Zealand ports.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Sec­re­tary Craig Har­ri­son says the can­cel­la­tion of a pro­posed MOVE Logis­tics roll-on-roll-off (RoRo) ship due to tech­ni­cal issues was a step back­ward for New Zealand coastal ship­ping.

MOVE Logis­tics had planned to use a $10 mil­lion co-invest­ment from Waka Kotahi to build a new methanol-capa­ble ves­sel which could ser­vice region­al New Zealand ports in both islands.

Mr Har­ri­son says New Zealand des­per­ate­ly needs to devel­op coastal ship­ping capac­i­ty in the region­al sup­ply chain.

“New Zealand coastal ship­ping pro­vides redun­dan­cy and resilience in our sup­ply chain in a volatile glob­al envi­ron­ment.”

Mr Har­ri­son said there had been hard lessons about the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of our trans­port sys­tem in recent years and the impor­tance of the ‘blue high­way’ of coastal ship­ping.

“What hap­pened dur­ing COVID was that inter­na­tion­al ship­ping dis­rup­tion put our entire sup­ply chain in jeop­ardy. This could eas­i­ly hap­pen again with anoth­er pan­dem­ic or war.”

Anoth­er threat was land trans­port links being dis­rupt­ed by cli­mate change weath­er events, such as Cyclone Gabrielle, or earth­quakes, both of which had tak­en out road and rail links.

In both cas­es, New Zealand coastal ship­ping offered redun­dan­cy in the sys­tem and pro­vid­ed an essen­tial role, he says.

Mr Har­ri­son says a nar­row focus on road­ing by the new Gov­ern­ment would increase depen­den­cy on vul­ner­a­ble land based motor­way links.

“It’s going to be a very expen­sive exer­cise to find those motor­ways out of action if we have not got our coastal ship­ping capa­bil­i­ty in place.”

Under the pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment, for­mer Min­is­ter of Trans­port Michael Wood announced $30 mil­lion fund­ing between four New Zealand oper­a­tors to help each com­pa­ny bring at least one extra coastal ves­sel into ser­vice.

Mr Har­ri­son says as a result of this, sev­er­al new coastal ship­ping ser­vices were up and run­ning or in the process of com­ing online. 

How­ev­er, oth­er ser­vices had been lost.

In March 2023 the short lived New Zealand ‘Coastal Con­nect’ domes­tic ser­vice was pulled after less than a year by Maer­sk.

New Zealand fuel tankers that con­nect­ed the Mars­den Point refin­ery with fuel depots in New Zealand ports had been tak­en off the coast in 2022 fol­low­ing the clo­sure of the refin­ery by its own­er.

“It is essen­tial the cur­rent mod­est growth we have seen in New Zealand coastal ship­ping does not stall.”