Maersk dangles carrot for port to lift its game

Shipping giant Maersk intends to reintroduce an important US-New Zealand route weekly import call at Auckland next year — provided the port lifts productivity and starts sticking to berthing schedules.

Meanwhile Northport will continue to reap Auckland container business from Maersk’s Panz service connecting New Zealand and Australia with US west coast ports, with two additional ships on the route due to call at the Northland port in May and June.

Maersk stopped the weekly Panz service Auckland import call 16 months ago due to congestion and lengthy berthing delays, a flow-on from pandemic-related departure delays at US west coast ports. Instead, the service called every second week.

The Auckland Council-owned port is New Zealand’s main gate for imports, which have soared in line with global consumer demand trends during the pandemic.

Container shipping costs have risen more than 400 per cent since the outbreak.

Maersk Oceania executive My Therese Blank said there had been “a slight reduction” in delays at Auckland which was positive.

“We will continue our collaboration with the port to reduce impact to our service network where possible. To alleviate the pressure on Ports of Auckland as well as continuing to offer our customers improved coverage in the upper North Island, we have additional two vessels on the Panz service planned to call at Northport: Synergy Keelung on the 9th of May 2022 and ANL Warrnambool on the 1st of June.

“Once the berthing windows in Ports of Auckland can be reinstated, expected in 2023, we intend to reintroduce a weekly port call at Ports of Auckland on the Maersk Panz service,” she told the Herald.

However continuing delays and a long waiting time for a berthing window at Auckland was still a problem on one occasion last month, when Maersk made the contingency decision to make Northport the first Oceania cargo discharge call.

The expected waiting time at Auckland for Maersk vessels then was nine days, down from 14 days in the first quarter of this year, said Blank.

The Northport calls, while good news for the deepwater gateway which has plans to be a key player in the upper North Island supply chain and help relieve congestion, won’t be welcomed by Customs Brokers and Freight Forwarders’ Federation president Chris Edwards.

While Maersk’s intention in using Northport is to reduce delay impacts on its wider network while still serving upper North Island customers, Edwards said clearing cargo from Northport adds up to two weeks to delivery and “adds insult to injury”.

Commenting recently on “unique” contributors to inflation in New Zealand, in his private freight business capacity, Edwards said “the Auckland port situation is still a diabolical mess — vessels are still going up to Northport which shouldn’t be happening”.

Edwards’ industry and upper North Island importers and exporters have high expectations of new Ports of Auckland chief executive Roger Gray to improve the port’s productivity and complete its container terminal automation project, under way since 2016 and still not implemented.

Maersk’s intention to resume weekly import calls on the Panz run — with provisos — adds to that pressure.

Edwards has met with Gray, in the job less than a month after heading Lyttelton Port, and has “confidence in his approach”.

“But the port won’t be functioning anywhere near where it needs to be this side of Christmas I would say.”

Roger Gray in a written response said: “We can’t fix the issues offshore or the local supply chain congestion slowing the flow of containers off the port, but we shouldn’t be adding to delays.

“One of my key priorities is to lift our performance over the year and return to being a safe and reliable supply chain partner. Central to that is finding and training more staff.”

Gray said that, at his meeting with Edwards, the freight forwarder had shared his own staffing challenges, saying he’d had just half the number of people he needed for his warehouse operation recently.

“Our challenge isn’t at the same scale, but we face the same tight labour market and will be working hard to attract people to our business.”

The Auckland port situation is still a diabolical mess — vessels are still going up to Northport which shouldn’t be happening. Chris Edwards, president, Customs Brokers and Freight Forwarders’ Federation