Dire Strait: KiwiRail selling Interislander freight ferry

KiwiRail intends to sell Interislander’s freight-only ferry to free up crew and money to improve the reliability of its remaining vessels.

The state-owned enterprise announced it wants to sell Valentine in a statement this afternoon.

Valentine was originally leased to provide additional freight capacity when Kaiarahi’s gearbox was “catastrophically damaged” in August 2021 and was out of action for more than a year.

Valentine was subsequently purchased at the end of this lease period in January 2023.

Interislander operations general manager Duncan Roy said Valentine has served its purpose by providing additional capacity, but he said it has not been required consistently.

“Keeping her ready for sailing and crewed is taking funding and resource that could be better invested in strengthening reliability in the rest of the fleet.

“With our fleet now back up to full strength we have sufficient freight capacity on the other three ships, so now is a good time to sell the Valentine and realise the financial benefits. It makes good commercial sense.”

Roy said it was not operationally practical or commercially viable to have the Valentine on a regular sailing schedule or to maintain her on standby ready for short-term outages.

Earlier this year there were mass service cancellations after Kaitaki’s mayday call and subsequent gearbox problems which took her out of action for more than two months.

Suspended Transport Minister Michael Wood said in March it was the unreliability of the ferries which caused a “degree of chaos”.

KiwiRail needed to do a better job of managing reliability going forward, Wood said.

He suggested this might mean the ferries were taken out of service for maintenance more frequently, which could be signalled well in advance and avoid unplanned disruptions.

Roy said KiwiRail now has several measures in place to enhance the resilience of the fleet.

“Our ship inspection and maintenance programme includes more frequent scheduled maintenance breaks, where we take our ships out of service more regularly for maintenance checks in wet and dry dock environments, and we are instituting a new approach to managing our assets and fleet.”

Roy said the extra money and crew from the sale of Valentine will help KiwiRail’s increased focus on reliability until its new mega ferries arrive in 2025 and 2026.

”We will now actively explore market interest with a view to concluding a sale of the Valentine,” he said.

Georgina Campbell is a Wellington-based reporter who has a particular interest in local government, transport, and seismic issues. She joined the Herald in 2019 after working as a broadcast journalist.