Tasman report disputed

Press, 29 December 1980, Page 2

Tasman report disputed

PA Wellington The authors of the. Tasman Shipping report had ignored the significant improvement in regularity, reliability cargo damage, transit time and space availability, said the managing director of ,> the Union Shipping Group, "Ltd (Mr John Keegan).

He was commenting on the report issued on Monday by the Bureau of Transport Economics ;-in Australia and the New Zealand Ministry of Transport, which criticised the present cargo service. “The report fails miserably in terms of both objectivity and credibility/’ sftid Mr Kee-

i gan. “Its authors have cho- • sen to ignore much of the factual information with ■ which they were provided and . the conclusions reached by the authors bear no relaf tionship to much of the material included in the body of the report itself. “In stating that the standard of service; offered by the Union Company has fallen over the past decade, the : authors ignore significant improvement in regularity, reliability, cargo damage, transit time and space availability. “The authors, choose to highlight the fact that 26 i per cent of respondents to a ( survey .consider-the present 'frequency of service in- ( adequate, but fail to point • out 74 per cent the ■ service totally adequate, and • indeed that factor was high- , lighted by the of ; the Shipping Survey pro- ■ the Ministry of Transport in October 1980. .“Likewise the authors tlfoos’e to'state, that 21 per cent of' respondents to a sur-, vey would prefer a 30 per cent less frequent ’service if : it WasS accompanied by a freight rate reduction of 10 per cent. They fail to highlight the fact that 79 per cent thought otherwise,. “On the question, qf rates, not only are the figures quoted in the report, which compare Tasman freight r.-.tes with rates in other trades ex New Zealand and Australia, wrong, but again the authors fail to point out i that the Survey of Shippers i resulted in 22 per cent of 1 exporters reporting Tasman I costs to be lower, 17 < per cent considering 1 them t to be the same and 36 per 1 cent considering them to be i higher. In a similar survey t in 1979 i.one of the export- i ers reported Tasman costs to be lower.” 1 On the question of excess 1 capacity and the suggestion { that one ship, the Marama, j

could be disposed of, Mr Keegan said: “The suggestion is totally impractical and demonstrates the distance between the authors of the report and commercial and operational reality. “Even though, in the body of the report, the seasonal nature of the trade is recognised, no such recognition is given to this when drawing the concluson on fleet capacity. “Over the last three months the roll-on/roll-off fleet has traded 89 per cent full over-all, some voyages carrying cargo to 100 per cent of capacity. “Under no circumstances could the fleet have coped with the freight offered without Marania and indeed it could not have coped with freight offered had there been . the succession of industrial problems that the trade suffered in 1979.’’ The report refers to the possibility of “re-engining” the two gas turbine vessels

and suggests that if these were to be “re-engined,” costs could be reduced by 4 per cent. “The basis upon which this calculation is made bears no relationship with realism — -the company is currently evaluating tenders which indicate that the cost of such conversion is likely to be greater than twice the cost the authors suggest, the time taken fur the work likely to be twice the time suggested, and the cost of obtaining a replacement vessel, substantially greater than the cost the authors allow. ;. .

“It was a disappointment that yet another study into shipping on th£ Tasman falls in credibility because of the desire on the part of its authors to prove pre-con-ceived judgments. It is particularly disappointing because my company went out of its way in terms of both time and information to help give it that credibility,” said Mr Keegan, >