A new mobile biosecurity X-ray machine will be based in Dunedin from next month.
The Ministry for Primary Industries has bought two new units to help keep destructive pests, such as fruit fly, out of New Zealand.
Ministry detection technology manager Brett Hickman said the ministry bought a similar device last year to screen the bags of cruise ship passengers arriving at North Island ports.The three mobile units will be based in Dunedin, Tauranga and Auckland.
"We’ll be able to deploy the machines from these bases at short notice to wherever they are required," Mr Hickman said.
A unit would be based in Dunedin from early next month but the location had not been confirmed.
A fixed X-ray unit was already in use at the Dunedin Airport so the mobile unit would only be used at the airport when the fixed unit was "out of action".
Dunedin was selected because the city provided access to many areas visited by international vessels, such as Milford Sound, Stewart Island and Lyttelton.
The machine was ‘‘very fast’’ and only added a short delay for passengers disembarking from cruise ships, he said.
The unit worked like an airport security X-ray machine with trained operators identifying biosecurity risk goods from X-ray images of baggage as it passed through the machine.
The unit would not cause redundancies in the biosecurity detector dog team, he said.
"The machine will be used in conjunction with biosecurity detector dog teams and questioning of passengers by quarantine officers."
