Reality Check For Ports With Service Consolidation
April 3rd, 2008
The recent announcement by Maersk and Hamburg Sud the shipping lines will rationalise their services from NZ to North America highlights yet again the small scale of NZ’s ports relative to the might of the big global shipping companies. NZ often has an inflated opinion of itself in terms of its perceived importance in the world. Some of NZ ports, often the smaller ones, seem to believe they are large players in the ports scene and shipping companies ignore their wishes at their peril.
Small Market. As PrimePort Timaru has discovered this is not the case and while the port may have increased its container trade dramatically in recent years to about 100,000 TEUs a year, the port’s entire annual container trade could be handled by less than eight of the largest container ships afloat or being built. The harsh reality is the multinational shipping companies have been offering NZ exporters and ports a level of port calls far beyond what they would in most other countries world-wide, often those with much larger economies. This in part reflected poor internal transport links, a problem which although not as bad as in the past has not been fully addressed with the rail network falling well short of modern global standards. Just because NZ has a lot of ports which traditionally have been export ports doesn’t mean it make sense for shipping companies to use them all especially in an era of high fuel prices. The result may be higher internal costs for some exporters but that is of little concern to international shipping companies. The country has been caught napping by the shipping companies in terms of internal transport infrastructure and this rationalisation should prompt greater action.
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