Frustrated with new vehicle delivery delays of up to three weeks due to congestion at Ports of Auckland, Holden New Zealand managing director Kristian Aquilina is calling for a national approach to the management of ports and shipping infrastructure.
“New Zealand is the only developed economy in the western world that I know of that doesn’t have a national port solution, and for an island nation that’s pretty remarkable,” he says.
“So, I think it’s time for central government to step up and get involved in the major infrastructure such as ports, and I’m not talking selfishly about cars because it’s a problem that goes way beyond just those,” says Aquilina.
“I do believe we need a national plan centred around port infrastructure.
“It’s great to be part of a growing economy and new vehicle market, but it brings its challenges with the ability of the available infrastructure to cope with such growth,” he says.
“We have cars sitting on vessels waiting for port spots to unload all the time, and we are struggling to get cars through the ports promptly,” says Aquilina.
“We are used to turnarounds of two to three days, not three weeks.”
Aquilina says there is a bottleneck of new and used vehicles hitting Ports of Auckland in the last two weeks of every month thanks to the car carrying vessels arriving on or around the same date.
“We’ve had new cars and trucks delayed because they are located on the wrong side of another group of used vehicles, or whatever,” says Aquilina.
“It’s a shame that we won’t be able to capitalise on the available market growth entirely if we don’t have a true infrastructure in place to be able to make the most of it.
“The current set up leaves the councils and the private port companies to sort it out themselves,” says Aquilina.
“Perhaps ports have a role to play that’s not always competing against each other but instead complementing each other, but it’s impossible to get to this point when we have this laissez-faire approach to managing infrastructure which is an essential resource for the future of the nation,” he says.
“You wouldn’t see a central government leave the management of the roads to local councils alone; you wouldn’t leave air traffic control or rail in the hands of the local administration, it just doesn’t make sense,” says Aquilina.
“But we seem to accept its okay for the managing the ports in this way, it is a damned shame, and I think it is something in the future that we need to address,” he says.
“We need to decide on significant long-term investment for this country, and its placement and efficiency needs co-ordination.”
Aquilina says inquiry by the new car industry to central government has met consistently with the response that it is for the councils and the ports to sort out the needs of the market, and that the market will determine the right and efficient outcome.
He feels it is a flawed response.
“For our business, the port congestion is having a direct impact in the short term, but if it is left unmanaged from a national perspective it will only take a crisis to get someone to react, and I don’t want that to happen,” says Aquilina.
He believes managing the inflow and outflow of goods needs a national approach and asks: “How is one port authority going to come up with that response?”
Aquilina says cars and containers need to enter multiple points because customers and markets are in various locations around New Zealand.
“A single silver bullet solution centred around Auckland may not be the right answer for New Zealand, but we will never discover the right answer if it’s managed the way it is currently,” says Aquilina.
