The launch of a new vessel on the coastal shipping service is being promoted as a vital expansion of domestic sea freight capacity.
Pacifica Shipping said the 130m Spirit of Endurance, being launched this month, would be the largest New Zealand-operated ship in many decades to carry high volumes of container cargo in domestic waters.
The ship, built in China this year, had a 17 knots service speed and a gross tonnage of 7464 tonnes. It would move about 1000 containers each week between the ports of Auckland, Tauranga, Canterbury and Otago.
Pacifica's move was welcomed by Ports of Auckland, which hoped the new ship would be the first of many new coastal services.
"Increased coastal shipping will help take pressure off the nation's roads and create a more robust, resilient supply chain," Ports of Auckland managing director Jens Madsen says.
"With international shipping lines using larger and larger vessels, and visiting fewer ports, a gap was emerging in the market for cargo feeder networks."
"At the same time, a study published in September estimated that New Zealand's "freight task" would increase by 70-75 percent during the next 25 years," Madsen says.
"Moving goods by sea is more environmentally friendly and efficient than taking them by road or rail."
"Trans-shipments, where cargo is loaded from one ship to another, is rising, growing more than 150 per cent at Ports of Auckland since 2004/05," he says.
Trans-shipment volumes for the September 2008 quarter were up 24 per cent on the same period last year.
Pacifica chief executive Rod Grout says his company's new vessel was well suited to the Government's Sea Change initiative to move 30 per cent of all freight by coastal ships by 2030.
"Sea freight now accounts for 15 per cent of total goods carried in this country, about half on an ad hoc basis by overseas ships in transit," he says.
In comparison, Japan moved 41 per cent of its domestic freight by coastal ships.
"More vessels are needed in this country linking producer and consumer centres directly," Grout says. I
"It is also untenable to have 2.5m tonnes of domestic freight crossing Cook Strait on trucks each year, while just 1m tonnes moved on all ships on the rest of the coast."
Provided the new ship's service was 'not constrained by further subsidies to prop up competing land transport modes,' Pacifica believed it would be the forerunner of more coastal vessels in future.