Moving the port not as easy as redirecting ships

Friday, 29 September 2017

Shipping cars to Whangarei would mean a lot more trucks on the road.

NZ First leader Winston Peters' plan to move the operations of the Ports of Auckland to Whangarei's Northport by 2027 has been a talking point of this election.

He wants the cars gone by 2019, in time for the return of the America's Cup to Auckland.

Is moving the port still a bottom line for Winston Peters?

The plan is estimated to cost billions – but would it even work?

Within a few decades, the Auckland port is likely to have reached capacity at its current site, so it will have to move somewhere.

Northport would have to expand to handle Auckland freight.

* Freight expert says shifting Auckland's port northwards would hit people in pocket

* Winston Peter's bottom lines - what are they and where will he go?**

Ngati Whatua O Orakei has lent its support to Peters' pledge for the move to happen now, saying it was time for Auckland's waterfront land to be used for people to 'play, work and live' rather than to be piled high with used cars. The return of the America's Cup provided extra incentive, it said.

Northland Inc chief executive David Wilson said the benefits for Auckland were obvious.

'You don't have to go far to look at the effect of moving the port out of Sydney – it's create the thriving Docklands areas. There are better ways of moving freight and to supply Auckland.'

'Most people can see the logic. There is some resistance in terms of when, how fast and how much. But in my lifetime Auckland's population has tripled. It isn't slowing down. There's more and more pressure to service Auckland's growth.'

WOULD THE MOVE WORK?

Annabel Young, executive director of the New Zealand Shipping Federation, said the first thing to consider was whether the cargo would actually move to Whangarei, if the port operations did.

'Or would it go to Tauranga or a range of other ports? If you can convince the owners of the Auckland port they should shift to Whangarei it's not a slam dunk that everything that goes to Auckland is going to go to Whangarei.'

HOW WOULD FREIGHT BE MOVED?

Even if ships are happily heading into Whangarei instead of Auckland, there's still the question of how the goods get to their final destination, from there.

About 70 per cent of what goes into Auckland's ports stays within the region.

'That stuff will have to come back to Auckland, anyway,' Young said.

'So all you've done is add to the cost of it by sending it to Northport.'

At the moment, it is impossible for containers to be transported by rail from Northport to Auckland. What rail line there is is constrained by the fact that its tunnels are not big enough to accommodate containers.

KiwiRail has estimated the cost of getting Northland's rail network operating to the same standard as other regions as up to $1 billion, and improving the rail link for freight through Auckland at another $2b to $3b.

That means, at least for the meantime, there would be a big increase in truck traffic on roads that are not among the country's finest.

Chris Carr, of transport firm Carr and Haslam, estimated that if cars were shipped to Whangarei instead of Auckland, there would have to be a car carrier running between Auckland and Whangarei every two-and-a-half minutes, all day, every day.

He said the road between Auckland and Whangarei was set to be improved eventually - and once that happened, it would be an economic boost to the region, anyway. But until then, moving trucks between the two could be arduous.

Dave McIntyre, commentator at NZ Shipping Gazette, said as many as 900,000 containers a year would have to be moved in and out of Northport.

Then there's the problem of what happens once it hits Auckland. Much of what comes into the port is destined for South Auckland, so trucks would have to traverse the city, too.

'Imagine the truck traffic required to get it to the industrial areas of Penrose and Mount Wellington,' McIntyre said.

But Wilson said there could be a model similar to the Horotiu inland freight hub near Hamilton, which Ports of Auckland has invested in.

'If you had a distribution centre in Silverdale, Warkworth or Wellsford you could conceivably bring freight into Northport and supply the northern parts of Auckland from the north and the southern parts from the south. It opens up a bunch of opportunities.'

WHO LOSES OUT?

Auckland mayor Phil Goff declined to comment for this story but has previously told media that, while he was supportive of the port moving from the CBD, it should stay within the Auckland region.

Ratepayers get $60 million in dividends a year from the operations of the ports of Auckland.

Young said Ports of Auckland's plan at the moment is to concentrate what it does on its current site, with automation to achieve higher density on container stacks and high-rise constructions to hold cars. It would not comment for this story.

She said the recent fuel crisis had highlighted how useful it was to Auckland to have a functioning port to receive supplies.

COULD NORTHPORT HANDLE IT?

Northport would not comment for this article, but it has been working through its own plans for the future.

It has consented expansion plans including increasing its berth length by about half. Longer-term plans are to increase its total footprint to 70 hectares and 1.4km of berthage. Auckland, by contrast, has about 3km of berth space.

Whangarei mayor Sheryl Mai said it had the advantage of being a natural deepwater port, with no dredging required.

She said the area that Northport had available to it was a lot bigger than the space that the Auckland port already has.

'There's heaps of potential there, for sure.'

Northport has about 75ha of industrial land available behind it.

Wilson said it made sense to use that land, rather than downtown Auckland.

'You've got second-hand Japanese cars on the most expensive real estate in the city. That's madness.'

IS THERE ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE?

But Young said it was possible that the future could be quite different than what was being planned for. Ports might not continue to get bigger indefinitely.

'Who knows what the effect of 3D printing is going to be?'

She said, if it became the norm to 3D print items, rather than import them, ports could become hubs for chunks of commodities that would be taken to use in printers, rather than boxes full of parts – and quite a lot of air.

'You wouldn't need to import as much.'

It was also possible that the country might import fewer cars, she said. Were that to happen, Auckland port's need to move at all might no longer be so pressing.