Port of Auckland closed for 24 hours after serious incident - August 2018

Please be advised the Port of Auckland ceased straddled operations at Fergusson Container Terminal and Empty Yard between Monday morning the 27th August to 7am Tuesday 28th August due to a serious incident. Find further details here.

The Port is now open and in full operation however the closure has created a backlog of containers both inbound and outbound. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work through these challenges together.

Update | 14th September

In the wake of a serious incident occurring on the 27th of August, the Port of Auckland have released a statement advising they are still facing operational challenges due to high number of containers currently in their yard. Please be aware there may be some delays for shipments in and out of Auckland, however they are continuing to work towards a solution to get the port back up to speed.

Please see below the notice received from the Ports of Auckland:

We regret to advise that we have not been able to achieve any significant gain in our operational performance in the last 24 hours due to the high number of containers in the yard. We must create a situation to focus on moving containers out of the terminal and therefore need to bring forward the intended suspension of ship side operations from next Wednesday to next Monday 17 September.

If we could do this sooner we would, however we are better to load exports currently in the yard onto vessels.

With heavy import vessel discharges due over the next several days and into the weekend the Terminal will literally be grid locked if we do not put this in place. Vessel operations will cease from 0700 hours on Monday 17 September and resume at 0700 hours Tuesday 18 September.

Throughout this time, all available resource will be diverted to servicing road trucks. This will enable importers to pick up their much-needed cargo. The next 7-10 days will continue to be very challenging and we assure all our customers that we are doing our very best to work through the congestion.

Operations update follows:

Vessels:

• Alongside and working: Schubert and Cap Capricorn
• Arriving tomorrow: Cap Marin and MSC Banu

Please continue to monitor Ports of Auckland website for changes in the vessel schedules.

VBS bookings continue to be managed based on the operational capacity throughout the day and night. Our Gate Ops team is working with trucking companies and managing priority bookings based on the vessel schedule. We ask that Carriers provide container numbers for the bookings required when sending their request through to the Driver Assist Team.

Imports:

Trucking Companies will receive priority bookings for Hazardous and Reefer import containers. Please note that there will be no extra free time for DG containers and reefer containers – including power charges.

Demurrage for all other units has been extended for the meantime.

Exports:

For the next 24 hours priority will be given only to export containers for:

• ANL Elanora;
• Maersk Izmir;
• OOCL Savannah

We will start receiving Export containers for the following vessels from 0700 hours Saturday 15 September:

• Kota Lestari;
• Spirit of Shanghai

We request rail users refrain from sending Export Containers that are not for the above mentioned vessels. Containers that are booked to load later vessels will not be unloaded from the train and will be returned.

Due to the space restrictions in the yard we will manage receival of Empty export containers directly with the shipping lines. The On Dock Link facility remains open for de-hire of Empties.

For further information please contact your local Mainfreight Air & Ocean Team.