Port of Tauranga presents another good result

The Port of Tauranga celebrates 20 years since being publicly listed with another good result, which was presented at the Port of Tauranga Limited annual meeting today.

"It s been a good 20 years and I hope you'll allow me to blow our horn just a bit", said chairman John Parker in a statement.

"The Ports of Auckland strike stretched us to the limit. It sounds great more business - but trying to balance the needs of existing customers with the urgent needs of those shut out of Auckland stretched us to the limit. We did our best for all but it was seriously tough on our staff and service providers and they performed magnificently", he said.

"The grounding of the Rena was a huge challenge as we put maximum effort into assisting the cleanup and ensuring the port stayed safe and working. To achieve such a good result in the face of these challenges is great."

In two decades, net profits have increased tenfold as overall trade volumes have increased by 190%, and container volumes by more than 1500%.

Port of Tauranga has been the best performing share on the New Zealand Stock Exchange over the last 15 years.

"Many people have assumed the majority of this growth was due to the extra containers we handled as a result of the Ports of Auckland industrial action earlier in the year. However, this is not correct, as most of the additional cargo is due to the seven new shipping services introduced to Tauranga during the financial year. Less than a third of the extra containers were as a result of the Auckland industrial action, and more than 200,000 containers came from the new services", added Port of Tauranga's Chief Executive Mark Cairnes.

In the 2012 financial year, strong growth across the Company and in all major cargo categories has seen Group net profit increase to a new record of $73.5 million. That is an increase of 26% on 2011 which of course was itself a record.

Read more in tomorrow's Bay of Plenty Times.