The owners of a noisy container park in Ahuriri say they are working on plans to move out of the suburb in a bid to end a two-year, three-way battle with residents and the council.
NZL Group's planned retreat from the suburb will come too late for one container park neighbour, Louise Ludlow, who sold her Battery Rd home last week after enduring two years of noise and ground shaking from the facility, which has a contract with Napier Port.
"I'm pretty happy. I'm getting out and I'm really glad to not be here while all this nonsense is going on," Ms Ludlow said.
"We've had it for two years and another year would just be too much with the constant barrage of noise and metal-on-metal scraping."
She said the company stacked containers up to four-high, 6m from her fence line.
"They block off the sun. It's like having a movable, ugly, noisy sky-scraper next door. It's a relief to go off to work. When I get home it's all on again. It's like living on the port."
NZL started operating the container park two years ago as a "mixed use" activity permissible under Napier City Council's zoning rules for the suburb.
Ms Ludlow blames the council for writing rules that allowed the business into the area.
"This is not mixed use activity. This is heavy industry activity."
Napier Mayor Bill Dalton agreed it was never anticipated a business such as NZL's would operate beside homes in the suburb. The council had been working hard to broker a deal that would see NZL move the operation to a more appropriate site. That was expected to happen in the "not-too-distant future".
"We can't wave a magic wand and make all the containers go because NZL has a right to be there," he said. "Our involvement has been to work very hard to make an alternative site attractive to NZL."
The council was also consulting with the public on a plan change for the area, which would stop a similar clash between residential and industrial requirements in the suburb happening in the future.
"We've acted on behalf of our residents who've told us it's a major issue for them and NZL have shown good will in agreeing to look to move elsewhere."
NZL Group managing director Ken Harris said he could not say when the container park would move but the company "had identified a couple of sites that might work" as an alternative location.
"Napier's doing very well. The exports are flowing through the port very quickly, and that's good for local exporters. Quite rightly residents have an issue because levels of activity in Ahuriri have been increasing and we've been very active to try and mitigate that."
Mr Harris denied claims by Ms Ludlow the company had been deliberately flouting noise limits by timing noisy operations for when council noise control staff were not on duty.
"The noise regulations are quite rigorous but we've been subjected to many hundreds of hours of monitoring and we maintain monitoring ourselves," he said.
"We frequently get complaints when we're not even operating. There's quite a lot of industrial activity in that area. It is quite hard for the residents to pick a rail shunt from a container being moved."
Ms Ludlow said she had lost money by having to sell her house. "I've lost quite a bit on it but I really couldn't have stood another year of it. I do feel sorry for the people who can't leave."
The property had been bought by a port worker who was aware of the situation, she said.