Growers fuming over delays

JAMMED: Every bit of space at the Napier Port is stacked with containers.

Congestion at Napier Port could lead some Hawke's Bay fruit and produce exporters to use other ports while trying to get through the seasonal export peak.

"We may have to look at trucking to Tauranga," Murray Tait of Te Mata Exports in Havelock North said yesterday.

"It has got beyond frustration now and there has to be something they [Napier Port] can do to help." Mr Tait said there was always extra pressure at this time of the year when the apple trade got into full swing but this year had been the worst he had encountered.

"We are shuffling things - we have had some containers miss ships but the biggest issue is logistics," he said, explaining that getting trucks loaded, unloaded and returned to the packhouses had become a major problem.

Trucks were expected to be able to make six trips a day but at present it was only about four.

"That should be the easy part," Mr Tait said.

"We've grown the apples and we've packed them and found buyers for them ... we don't need serious service provider issues like this."

Mr Tait said he "feared" what the short weeks around Easter and Anzac Day held for exporters and carriers and the apple season would keep pressure on through until July.

Although it would be extreme, moving the fruit would be just a matter of loading containers back on to trucks and sending them to Tauranga, Mr Tait said.

Napier Port chief operating officer Chris Bain said he was aware of the problems and the port was working to find solutions.

One factor was a 51 per cent increase in the number of empty containers brought into the port by shipping companies last month.

Mr Bain said a third of the containers could be stored off-port and there were plans to create more storage in Pandora which he hoped would be running by the end of the year.

Of the trucking build-ups and subsequent delays he said the port was working to improve the flow and a "vehicle booking systems" used successfully in Australian ports was being looked at.

It would manage the time trucks would arrive and depart and create an hourly average. At present, there could be 40 trucks in one hour and 100 the next.

Staff were working long hours and were dedicated to getting the flow of produce running more smoothly.

In the short term, the situation looked set to ease over the next week.