Shipments have grown through the link with the part-Fonterra-owned Kotahi business, with dairy trains bringing milk from the lower North Island. Coda, the joint-venture logistics business Port of Tauranga (POT) has with Kotahi, has organised domestic freight services for southbound backhaul loads to balance the dairy shipments, chief executive Mark Cairns said.
The port's share of North Island dairy volumes has risen from just over 50% in the past two years because of the Kotahi agreement.
Cairns hopes to bed-in the dairy volumes long term as farmers benefit from the expected much lower cost of getting exports to market as a result of Tauranga's channel dredging project allowing bigger ships to use the port from the end of this year.
A big increase in dairy volumes was a feature of POT's half-year ended December 31, up by 29% over the same period a year earlier, reflecting the second year of the Kotahi agreement. The total was 1.08 million tonnes, compared to 842,000 in 2014 and 771,000 in 2013.
Though POT owns half of NorthPort, Northland milk is also exported through Tauranga.
In the South Island, Prime Port Timaru has had a quadrupling of milk export volumes since POT took a 50% shareholding two to three years ago. All of the nearby Clandyboye plant volumes are now shipped through Timaru.
POT also reported kiwifruit volumes through Tauranga were up by 23% to 413,102 tonnes, and the port has new 10-year freight deals with Zespri International and Tauranga Kiwifruit Logistics.
The dairy and kiwifruit increases, and a 10.4% lift in container volumes, offset a fall in export log shipments.
These were down 16.2%, at 2.4m tonnes from 2.8m tonnes a year earlier. The 2013 figure had been higher again at 3.4m tonnes. Log volumes had started to pick up again in the last month or so, Cairns said, and second-half numbers should be stronger.
There had also been some growth in processed forest product shipped through Tauranga, Cairns said. Tauranga is the biggest container and export port in New Zealand.
Other volume changes during the half-year were a 14.5% fall in imported grain and stock feed supplements and a near 10% drop in fertiliser imports to 294,000 tonnes. Oil-related imports increased by 14%.
POT reported an after-tax profit of $38.6m for the half-year, slightly ahead of the previous year in normal earnings. The 2014 half-year had a $4.1m one-off gain from an asset sale.
Results showed the gains being won from the strategy of extending the port's catchment across NZ, chairman David Pilkington said.
A lot of focus had gone on improving rail efficiencies between Tauranga and the inland Metro Port in Auckland, Cairns said. This meant that both north and south rail lines had full loads going both ways.
Contractors are about one-third of the way through a deepening of the sea channel inside and outside the port at Tauranga. This should allow larger ships to start coming into the container terminal by the end of this year.
