CONTAINER FREIGHT Costs May Be Down But Charges Up

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31017, 24 March 1966, Page 1

CONTAINER FREIGHT Costs May Be Down But Charges Up

(Kew Zealand Press Association:

WELLINGTON, March 23.

Four shipping companies are investigating the possibility of cutting freight costs by carrying New Zealand’s refrigerated cargo to Britain and Europe in containers.

The chairman of the Exports and Shipping Council (Sir John Ormond) announced this after a meeting of the council in Wellington today.

He said the companies were proposing to engage an independent firm of qualified consultants to advise on the problems involved in using containers over a distance of 12.000 miles.

The council had endorsed this proposal.

The four companies are the Shaw Savill and Albion Company, the Port Line, the Blue Star Line and the New Zealand Shipping Company.

I Together they ship the bulk of New Zealand’s primary produce to the United Kingdom and Europe. Containers are reported to permit extremely fast loading and unloading of cargo—at 30 times the speed of regular cargo manhandling by dock labour. A conventional ship spends about half its time at wharves.

Shipping experts believe that containers can eventually cut this time to 20 per cent or less.

In the two years of operation, the council has devoted most of its attention to reducing the number of New Zealand ports at which cargo

vessels call, as far as possible, to two.

This reduction has cut £1 million a year off New Zealand's annual freight bill. Exporting and farming circles fear that in spite of this saving, continued world inflation and rising labour costs may force the shipowners to raise their charges. Sir John Ormond today declined to comment on suggestions that an increase would be requested.

He said, however, that the need for holding or reducing all costs associated with New Zealand’s export trade had never been more urgent. “We face a tide of rising costs that is not necessarily reflected in the market prices for our products,” he said. “In the long run our export trade can be healthy only if it is profitable to the producers and all those who are responsible for the processing, handling and transport services.

“The Exports and Shipping Council has accepted the challenge of raising the efficiency in the organisation and operation of these services, not only to prevent the rising costs from smothering us. but also to ensure that our export trade is adequately and properly serviced,” Sir John Or mond said.