Shipowner Condemns Ports’ Rail Facilities

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28179, 18 January 1957, Page 10

Shipowner Condemns Ports’ Rail Facilities

(New Zealand Press Association J WELLINGTON, January 17. New Zealand’s ports will become a serious drag on the country’s fast-growing overseas trade if current ideas on road and rail access are not drastically revised, said Mr Basil Sanderson, a prominent British shipowner and authority on port operation, in Wellington today. Mr Sanderson, at present chairman of directors of the Shaw Savill Line, controlled the operation of all British ports from 1939 to 1945 as head of port and transit control in the Ministry of Transport.

The common outlook in New Zealand was that a good port consisted of good berths, good wharf sheds and good deep w’ater, but all these things were provided in vain unless road and rail access facilities were expanded and streamlined, Mr Sanderson said. “I foresaw the time coming when New Zealand exports and imports might be hindered and retarded by the sheer impossibility of handling the volume of goods the country can produce and consume. This danger has already materialised,” he said. “It is now impracticable to

market meat exports from the Dominion on the British and Continental markets without the export season dragging on so long that it conflicts with the home kill at the destination end, with serious financial losses to New Zealand growers as a result. “This is brought about by the inability of New Zealand port and transport facilities to dispatch more than 13 or 14 refrigerated vessels a month.

“As an example, Auckland rail facilities make it impossible to present refrigerated cargo faster than will keep three ships loading at ‘full gait.’ “In the whole of the South Island, it is impracticable to load more than an average of three to three and a half vessels at one time in the whole range of ports from Lyttelton to the Bluff, because of the shortage of refrigerated trucks on the railways and the disinclination to develop road transport to supplement the inadequate railway facilities continues.” said Mr Sanderson.