Northport needs to grow: Port of Tauranga

TAURANGA: The Port of Tauranga says it wants its Northport joint venture to grow its container operations to get more boxes into Auckland and relieve supply chain congestion.

The NZXlisted port, New Zealand’s biggest, owns half the Northland deepwater port with listed company Marsden Maritime Holdings.

Northport, which had a 42% lift in container volumes in the 2022 financial year (FY22) from vessels avoiding congestion elsewhere, particularly at Auckland, is poised to seek resource consent to expand its container port.

Discussing the Tauranga port’s FY22 financial results, chief executive Leonard Sampson said an associate business he would like to see improve was Northport, which the Port of Tauranga viewed as essential to an integrated upper North Island supply chain.

A slight blip in an otherwise strong earnings year — the Tauranga port beat its own guidance with an 8.7% lift in group net profit after tax to $111.3 million — was a 16.2% decline to $15 million in the earnings of its subsidiaries and associate companies, which include Northport.

Mr Sampson said the dip was because some operations were more exposed to commodities than others — for example, Northport and Timaru’s PrimePort had variability of log volumes.

Asked which associate business he would particularly like to improve, he said Northport, and key to that was the Government’s plan to build a rail spur from the main trunk line to Marsden Point.

‘‘I’d like to see Northport look to grow its container business and to support getting containers into the Auckland market to help with some of the congestion,’’ Mr Sampson said.

‘‘The key opportunity to facilitating container growth in

Northland is going to be the efficient movement of bulk volumes of containers, and rail has a big part to play.’’

Despite a 42% jump in its container volumes, Northport’s profit was down 13.9% to $7.5 million. Breakbulk volumes were down 17.6% and log volumes declined 518,405 tonnes on the previous year.

A recent independent report commissioned by Northport on the social and economic potential of its growth plans concluded about 1500 jobs could be created around Marsden Point, in Whangarei and in the wider Northland region by expanding the container operation.

The report said an additional shipyard and floating drydock suggested by the port on its western boundary could be the catalyst for another 1135 jobs.

Meanwhile, the Port of Tauranga’s FY22 results were better than expected given another year of disruption, Craigs Investment Partners head of private wealth research Mark Lister said.

Net profit, ebitda, the final dividend of 8.2 cents per share and operating cashflow were all up on Craigs’ predictions.

‘‘Everything stacks up and looks very healthy. Where there was a little caution was around the outlook, which is unsurprising and exactly what we have seen from just about every other company [this reporting season],’’ Mr Lister said.

‘‘We’ve seen a lot of good results but [also] caution around outlook because of the level of uncertainty out there.’’

The port gave no earnings guidance, preferring to wait until its annual meeting next month

It was the third year of severe supply chain and shipping disruption for the Mount Maunganui port, which handles 32% of all New Zealand cargo, 36% of all exports and 42% of all shipping containers. —

❛ The key opportunity to facilitating container growth in Northland is going to be the efficient movement of bulk volumes of containers