Container shipping giant Maersk says it is abandoning Port Taranaki, the main port on the North Island's west coast.
The announcement comes 10 years after the port was included in a service to North and Latin America, making it the final New Zealand port of call for a service to the hub port of Tanjung Pelepas in Malaysia.
Maersk is Port Otago's largest customer and "no changes are expected" at Port Chalmers, chief executive Geoff Plunket said yesterday.
In May, Maersk dropped a weekly transtasman service to Port Chalmers, with the annual loss of about 22,000 mainly empty trans-ship containers, then reduced the size of ships visiting the southern port.
Early this month, French line CMA CGM Group announced a weekly service connecting Port Chalmers to Asia and Pacific Island destinations.
In 2001, Maersk Sealand said New Plymouth would handle exports from Taranaki and the lower North Island, and potentially dairy products from Waikato, and port managers described the announcements as a "real reversal of fortunes".
Those good times ended yesterday.
Maersk's New Zealand managing director Julian Bevis blamed a steady decline in cargo volumes for the port being dropped.
In 2006, when Maersk controlled about 40% of the New Zealand market, Maersk said it wanted to drop four ports and just call at two primary ports and three secondary ones.
It shifted the focus of its port calls from Tauranga to Auckland, and two years later, in 2008, Maersk cancelled about 104 annual ship calls to Port Otago, most of which had subsequently been reinstated over time.
Cargo through the New Plymouth port had dropped since Fonterra cut output by 65% at its Whareora plant near Hawera in August 2009 - then estimated to be a loss of about 22,000 containers a year from the port's 65,000 containers handled in 2008-2009.
A decade ago, the port was handling about 8000 containers a year.
Mr Bevis said the Danish shipping line had changed its transtasman schedules to include Lyttelton instead of New Plymouth.
This was despite Taranaki Regional Council ratepayers - who own the port - spending $20 million in 2007 on dredging to allow it to serve larger container vessels, such as Maersk Duffield, the 45,803 gross tonne container carrier that, at 289m, was the longest vessel to call there.
Port Taranaki handles 0.7% of the nation's sea freight imports by value (2.4% by weight) and 7.8% of the value of sea freight exports (12.2% by weight).
The Productivity Commission is already investigating international freight services and has questions whether there is an imbalance in "bargaining power" between ports and shipping companies.
"Ports depend on shipping companies using them to justify investment in facilities and to earn a satisfactory financial return," the commission said this month.
- Additional reporting by NZPA
