The Press SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1968. Trans-Tasman Shipping

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31796, 28 September 1968, Page 14

The Press SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1968. Trans-Tasman Shipping

For many years business firms in the South Island have complained about their overseas shipping links. The fewer calls made at South Island ports compared with the North Island ports serving more populous regions have inevitably led to delays in receiving plant and raw materials from abroad. Since devaluation the complaints have taken a new turn: South Island firms starting to export have found the lack of a frequent and regular trans-Tasman shipping service a serious handicap in competing—often with North Island firms—on the Australian market. The options available to the South Island exporter are the irregular service connecting South Island ports with Australia, shipping through Wellington, or airfreighting. The first choice is too irregular to suit most shippers, the others much more expensive.

The trans-Tasman shipping services will be greatly improved when the Union Steam Ship Company’s two new roll-on, roll-off vessels enter the trade next year. South Island interests are still hopeful that regular calls will be made at a South Island port by these vessels, although when the Union Company announced its plans for the new vessels in June this year it omitted South Island ports from its announcement At that stage the planned itinerary was Auckland, Wellington, Sydney; Auckland, Wellington, Melbourne. Each of the 18-knot vessels was expected to make the round trip in a fortnight. Auckland and Wellington would thus get a weekly, Sydney and Melbourne a fortnightly service. Granted the need to make the best use of rollon, roll-off ferries by calling at only two New Zealand ports—but not necessarily the same two ports—on each round trip, the Union Company’s proposed service ignores the 29 per cent of the population living in the South Island. Population is, of course, not the only criterion. A better indication of the volume of cargo offering at each port and likely to be discharged at each port is gained from a study of industrial production statistics. These figures showed—in 1965-66, the latest year available —that 50 per cent of New Zealand’s industrial production was located north of New Plymouth and Gisborne: firms in that area requiring a regular rollon, roll-off shipping service to supply them with plant and raw materials from Australia or to take their products to Australian markets may be assumed to ship through Auckland. The remainder of the North Island accounted for nearly 30 per cent of industrial production, and the remaining 20 per cent of industrial production came from South Island factories.

On these figures, the South Island justifies almost as many calls by a roll-on roll-off ferry as Wellington. Yet these figures do less than justice to the South Island argument for a service comparable with Wellington’s. Motor assembly requires regular imports from Australia but contributes virtually nothing to exports, and the dairy industry has virtually no export markets in Australia; if appropriate allowances were made for these two industries—heavily concentrated in the North Island—the South Island would appear to be a greater potential market for Australian exports and a greater potential exporter to Australia than the lower half of the North Island. On the face of it, the most profitable schedule for the roll-on, roll-off vessels would s?£m to be a weekly call at Auckland, a fortnightly call at Wellington and a fortnightly call at Lyttelton. As the capacity of each vessel is 4000 tons of cargo, Auckland would need to take 2000 tons of Australian imports and supply 2000 tons of exports to Australia a week, Wellington and Lyttelton each 2000 tons a fortnight It is regrettable that no thorough survey along these lines, culminating in a questionnaire to all South Island importers from and exporters to Australia, has been undertaken by any of the interested parties. Examination of shipping documents—if the shippers would allow it—might have produced the information; but it is difficult to separate coastal shipping movements from transhipments. Much of Wellington’s present trans-Tasman exports originate in the South Island; and neither the Union Company nor the Wellington Harbour Board has any incentive to divert ships from Wellington to the South Island. It may not be too late to gather the comprehensive statistics that might convince the Union Company it should allocate to Lyttelton half the calls it intended to allocate to Wellington, though useful and suggestive figures are being collected from a handful of those most affected in the Christchurch area. But if these interests were prepared to guarantee outward cargoes approaching 2000 tons a fortnight from Lyttelton, the Union Company could scarcely refuse to put on a fortnightly service, at least for a trial period.