Competition to buy Port Whangarei, including its wharves, is heating up amid fears the multi-million dollar facility could be monopolised by a single company.
Northland Port Corporation chairman Mike Daniel said his organisation was talking to two groups about the sale of the 85 hectare port property.
Those groups included interests connectedto superyacht builder New Zealand Yachts, and another associated with prominent Whangarei businessman Dave Culham, Mr Daniel said.
The site, which includes wharves and dredge ponds, could be worth about $10 million.
"With the migration to the new port being developed at Marsden Point, the land at the old port, at present owned by the Northland Port Corporation, will no longer be required," Mr Daniel said.
"We will be selling it, hopefully in one parcel to the best bidder."
In future it would not be possible to operate the site as a port, because of siltation in Whangarei Harbour and the lack of anywhere suitable to put dredgings, he said.
Mr Culham said the issue was of critical importance for Whangarei.
Ownership of the port, and plans by a company associated with NZ Yachts for residential development in the hills behind the port, would effect the heavy industry and boat building industry which existed alongside the harbour.
Whangarei businesses needed to have access to the wharves, and the only way that could be assured by some form of public ownership, he said.
The Port Whangarei land should not go into monopoly ownership, Mr Culham said.
Mark Farnsworth, chairman of the Northland Regional Council which owns 72 per cent of the shares in the port company, said the council did not have a position yet on wharf ownership .
Allen Jones, chairman of NZ Yachts and of Northern Land Holdings, which owns the land on which the yacht builder is based, said he wanted to build the port into an integrated property development.
"This exciting undertaking is not something I can create by myself - it requires other people with vision and drive."
