Forty years ago, a harbour board engineering cadet Wayne Ruegg looked out of his office window onto a sparse scene of sand dunes and lupins.
Further along the Mount Maunganui wharf he could see the logs stashed untidily on the compacted sand near the water's edge ready to be loaded on to the Japanese ships.
Turning his eye inland he could see more sand dunes and scrubby pine trees. Totara St was still a gravel road, as was the no-exit Hewletts Rd.
Today, Ruegg looks out on a mini-city of asphalt, security fencing, coolstores, cargo sheds, hoppers, conveyor systems and forklifts. He glances across the harbour and sees the straddle carriers, four Liebherr cranes and stacks of containers at the Sulphur Point terminal.
Forty years ago the port business relied on the Asian log trade and the Kawerau newsprint carried to offshore markets by the Union Steamship Company. Seven ships could then tie up at the wharf at one time.
Now Port of Tauranga has become one of the most innovative and productive ports in Australia and New Zealand. Taking up nearly 170ha on both sides of the harbour, the port has developed a hi-tech, slick operation servicing more than 1200 ships that call each year from all parts of the world.
The port company on Monday celebrates its 50th birthday since the first ship, Union Steamship's MV Korowai, berthed at the new Mount deepwater wharf on December 6, 1954.
Ruegg, the port's longest serving employee, has been working there 40 of those 50 exciting years. "Looking back, it's been a rollercoaster ride - there's always been something happening," he said.
When he arrived at the port in 1964, fresh out of Tauranga Boys' College, the fourth extension of the Mount wharf was taking place and all the present land had yet to be reclaimed.
He joined the construction team for the eighth and ninth wharf extensions which included the roll-on roll-off facility and then moved on to the reclamation of Sulphur Point.
"They wanted to deepen the harbour and Sulphur Point was the logical place to put the sand - some million tonnes of it," he says.
Ruegg's job was to check the level of the reclamation after the sand was piped ashore from the Teremoana dredge and spread into place. The dredge worked away for five years before it gave up the ghost in 1975.
"The rear pipe split, the pumps filled up with water and it sank just off Sulphur Point. The dredge was refloated and sold to the Whangarei Harbour Board."
Another dredge took over and the reclamation of 78ha land was completed in the early 1980s - "it provided a fabulous area for our container operations".
Ruegg's most interesting job was supervising the blasting of the Tanea Shelf in the entrance to the harbour and alongside Mauao. A commercial diver, he often went underwater to check on progress or lay some charges.
"We had to blow up thousands of rocks - the biggest one was six metres in diameter - and it took 18 months to clear the channel," he said.
"It was quite a big operation and, as you can imagine, it created a lot of attention. We had to patrol Pilot Bay and keep people out of the water when the explosions were taking place. And huge crowds gathered on the walking track to take a look." After the rock was broken into manageable sizes a bucket dredge swept them up and dumped them into a large hole alongside the shelf.
The operation made the shipping channel straighter, wider and deeper. "In the early days the Union Steamship vessels weighed around 5000 tonnes - now we are handling ships weighing 30,000 tonnes," said Ruegg.
"If you had asked me 40 years ago what the port would look like today I would have been totally wrong. A guy called Laycock in the council did a futuristic plan of the port.
"It included the harbour bridge, Sulphur Point reclamation, even a rowing course. We used to joke about the plan but all of it almost came to fruition."
Ruegg pinpoints the 1988 port reform as the turning point for the newly formed Port of Tauranga company. At the same time, the Waterfront Industries Commission which employed the watersiders was disbanded and instead the wharfies ended up working for individual stevedores.
"The whole wharf scene changed ... the work ethic, the attitude, the productivity ... there are some professional people working out on the wharf. They are turning ships around three, four even five times quicker than they used to. You see all around you, business has become more competitive."
Port of Tauranga has made the most of the opportunities, becoming the largest export port in the country, one of the leading companies on the New Zealand sharemarket. Its activities impact on more than 23,000 full-time jobs in the Bay.
Today, the port moves nearly eight million tonnes of exports and just over four million of imports, producing 12.2 million tonnes of trade - a third of that is in containers, having grown from 49,000 TEUs (20 foot equivalents) in 1992 to nearly 395,000 TEUs.
The one million tonne mark was struck in 1965 - Ruegg remembers a quiet celebration after work when "we patted each other on the back" - and 3.3 million tonnes was reached in 1973. But after 1988 the port raced to seven million tonnes of trade in six years.
For the latest year ending June 30, the port company's total revenue was $151 million, providing a record profit of $33.65 million.
The port's success is based on its diversification strategy. It couldn't just rely on the pulp and paper from Kawerau and Kinleith, nor the logs from the Kaiangaroa Forest - products that are susceptible to a sudden drop in demand in overseas markets.
The port built coolstores and began moving dairy products in 1969. This trade, of butter, cheese, milkfat and milk powder, has grown to more than 800,000 tonnes a year. Then the kiwifruit industry took off and the port sends nearly 600,000 tonnes to overseas destinations.
There has been other new trade such as steel (350,000 tonnes), frozen meat (212,00 tonnes), onions (65,000 tonnes), apples (28,000 tonnes) and other goods totalling one million tonnes.
But the forestry industry still underpins the business. Logs in the last financial year totalled 2.8 million tonnes, though they dropped by one million tonnes, sawn timber was 720,000 tonnes, wood panel 173,000 tonnes, wood chips 127,000 tonnes and pulp and paper 900,000 tonnes.
The inland MetroPort in Onehunga was the best move the port made. The port cargo could grow its imports as cargo moved by rail between Auckland and Tauranga, allowing shipping lines to make just one call in the upper North Island.
The port's ethos is best summed up by its chief executive Jon Mayson. "We have never concentrated our attention on what our competitors may be doing. We believe that would lock us into playing catch-up.
"Instead, we have determinedly retained our focus on the multi-port and diversification strategy and our commitment to lead through innovation and efficiency."
After five years, MetroPort is now the country's third largest container port in its own right. "The business entity of Port of Tauranga is now a major part of Auckland City's infrastructure. It's actually taking some of the load off Auckland's choked-up traffic arteries. We think this leaves our competitors to do the catching up," says Mayson.
As for the future? ABN AMRO Craigs analyst James Miller believes Tauranga will become the dominant export port in the country.
"I don't think the port has finally executed that. The trick will be to match the exports with imports that are moved to Auckland. They have to get MetroPort working well.
"A shipper doesn't want to come into a port empty. He wants a full boat, empty it, fill it up again and away he goes. Unless the port can provide that efficiency the shipper will go elsewhere."
Miller says the port is enjoying "the Midas touch". The loss in log trade was replaced by the new coal imports which hit more than 660,000 tonnes last financial year.
"By all accounts the company should be down and out in this part of the cycle with the (high) dollar stifling exporters and the log volumes back sharply," said Miller.
"However, the company has very successfully diversified revenue streams and has aggressively won new (shipping) contracts which add further scale to the Sulphur Point and MetroPort operations."
Miller is in no doubt the competition will get tougher but the port will enjoy the benefits of the global upswing in containers.
And there will always be the log business, with its ups and downs. Miller said: "Port of Tauranga is the tollgate for logs from Kaiangaroa Forest. You can't get them out of the country any other way - it's a dream proposition for the port."
Mayson said the port had reached levels of efficiency and productivity that would have seemed the stuff dreams were made of.
But Ruegg, 57, has seen 40 years of changes and he doesn't think for one minute they will end.
"I'm sure the management team will come up with something new, innovative and quite progressive - just as they have done in the past.
"It will still be an exciting place to work - even for the next seven to eight years while I'll be here."
By then he'll be happy to retire gracefully, satisfied he has done his bit in helping the company become a world class port that rose out of the Mount sand dunes 50 years ago.
Port rises from the dunes
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