More than 50 tonnes of container wreckage has been removed from the seabed around the Rena wreck this week.
A barge and crane have been used to collect the container scrap and debris from inside the exclusion zone. Some pieces of wreckage were as large as a hatch cover.
BraemarHowells operations manager Neil Lloyd said scrap was brought in by the barge-load.
"This is the end point to a huge amount of painstaking preparation, involving divers, engineering work around the lifting, and the pre-rigging of scrap. We are making every effort to push on with this work into the weekend, before a forecast deterioration in the weather."
A total of 955 containers have been recovered, and 66 more remain in identified locations but are yet to be recovered.
The tender process for the next stage of salvage work - wreck removal - is continuing.
Wreckage retrieval is continuing further away from Rena, at depths of up to 70m or 80m. A remotely operated underwater vehicle with robot arms was being used to pre-rig identified container scrap.
On land, clean-up teams continue to focus on Matakana Island, the Coromandel and areas further down the East Coast.
