The Press THURSDAY, JULY 3,1969. Container Ships For Lyttelton?

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32030, 3 July 1969, Page 12

The Press THURSDAY, JULY 3,1969. Container Ships For Lyttelton?

The Lyttelton Harbour Board has every reason to be pleased when a shipping line shows interest in using the board’s services. Farrell Lines want their ships to call at Lyttelton on a circuit of Australian and New Zealand ports at the western end of their run across the Pacific. Unless someone can show that the British Conference Lines’ plan for the United Kingdom-New Zealand container trade has been wrongly calculated, and that having four terminals (one in Britain and three in New Zealand) would be more efficient than having only three, the Farrell Lines’ proposal has no bearing on the scheme put up by the British lines. Another kind of trade, based on different kinds or volumes of cargo, and working to a different timetable, might warrant an entirely different choice of ports for handling containers; but one proposal should not be allowed to cdnfuse the other.

Negotiations with the Wellington and Auckland Harbour Boards should assure Farrell Lines and other shipping companies of a fair and effective assignment of container berths at those ports. The point to be considered by the Lyttelton board is no longer whether Lyttelton should become a container terminal for the United Kingdom trade in the near future but whether the board should equip a berth for any trade in containers. As operators of container ships, Farrell Lines naturally seek ports to handle container cargoes. The company should soon be able to give a close estimate of the number of calls its ships are likely to make at Lyttelton each year and the volume of container cargo likely to be moved through the port and its ships. At the, moment, neither figure seems likely to be very high. The board will have no difficulty in calculating, from the cost of installing equipment, the flow of containers that would justify the cost of preparing for the trade. If the Farrell Lines’ proposals and any other container shipping in prospect fail to justify immediately such an expenditure, the board will then be faced with the more difficult—and more speculative—task of estimating more remote possibilities. It will have to weigh the merits of early—and uneconomic—investment in container equipment in the hope of being able to take prompt advantage of unforeseen growth in trade against the immediate disadvantages of being unable to cater for the limited trade now offering. It is not an easy choice to make.