Ports caught in spreading freight congestion
Auckland’s cargo chaos is affecting other ports around the country as they cope with their own congestion problems.
Port of Auckland and freight companies have advised clients of delays and congestion.
Some ships had been diverted to Port of Tauranga. CentrePort in Wellington also reported some knock-on effects with ship calls sometimes doubling up rather than arriving in sequence.
But Lyttelton Port has experienced considerable congestion, with truckies complaining about being able to deliver only two containers a day.
There have been long queues as trucks wait their turn to offload containers.
Lyttelton Port Company marketing manager Simon Munt said there had been several causes including a ship engineering trouble.
‘‘In the past fortnight the terminal yard has been under pressure due to vessel delays relating to weather, and issues and delays experienced at Auckland port,’’ he said.
‘‘Bad weather in Asia affected several vessels on their journey to New Zealand, while issues in Auckland involving the upgrading of their automation process, has meant that part of their terminal is out of action.
‘‘The flow-on effect of ongoing disruption to vessel schedules has seen vessel arrivals clustered together with larger volumes of cargo discharged than loaded, including cargo destined for other ports.
‘‘On top of this we have a broken-down vessel taking up vital berth space in our container terminal and this is impacting the working of vessels, this flows onto road operations.
‘‘This is resulting in periods where we have very low trucking numbers and then peak periods where there are significant delays due to trucks arriving at the terminal in clusters.’’
Munt acknowledged the disruption on trucking companies.
The port was commissioning eight new straddle carriers and introducing a new vehicle booking system to help manage the flow of trucks.
Not all truckies were mollified. One of them who wished to remain anonymous said the port’s booking system included a system of fines if truckies were late – except when the port caused the delay.