Port of Tauranga Limited is the port authority for the port. With a commitment to innovation and customer service, the Port of Tauranga has become a preferred cargo gateway for the country and the economic center for the Waikato and Bay of Plenty regions. The Port of Tauranga is the fastest-growing port in New Zealand because it emphasizes maintaining the quality of its core business and continuously expanding into new areas.

The Port of Tauranga plans to be New Zealand’s primary port by offering a wide range of shipping and service options that go beyond the region. With that in mind, the Port of Tauranga established MetroPark Auckland, New Zealand’s first integrated inland port operation. They also developed a new deep-water port at Marsden Point, revealing a strong multi-port growth strategy. Through a joint venture with Asciano C3 Limited, the Port of Tauranga runs an integrated stevedoring and marshalling service that serves 13 ports in the country.

The Port of Tauranga is proud to offer its customers 24-hour access to its Customer Service Centre, a one-stop shop offering a variety of services that include monitoring, communicating, planning shipping movements as well as maintaining world-class security and surveillance services, generous support equipment and storage/handling space, and outstanding customer-oriented liaison services.

The Port of Tauranga’s channel offers maximum draft from 11.7 (low water) and 13 meters (high water). Cargo is moved by dedicated rail and road access from the terminal which covers about 78 hectares.

In the Port of Tauranga’s Mount Maunganui operations, the port has over two thousand continuous meters of berths with adjacent cargo sheds and a cold store with capacity for 20 thousand tons of perishable cargo. The wharf contains 22 bunker points for convenient refueling and over 90 hectares of land available for cargo storage and handling.

South of Mount Maunganui Wharf is the Port of Tauranga’s Tanker Berth. Completed in 1980, it specializes in handling dangerous goods in bulk, including hydrocarbon products, chemicals, and edible oils. With a free-standing 80-meter wharf, the dolphins at each end can accommodate ships of 250 meters.

Sulphur Point, on the west side of the Port of Tauranga, has a 600-meter heavy-duty wharf with almost a thousand power points and 27 hectares of paved yard for containers. Sulphur Point includes over 25 thousand square meters of covered storage and an additional nine-thousand-ton cold store.

In total, the Mount Maunganui wharf is over two thousand meters long, and the Sulphur Point wharf is 600 meters long. Both can accommodate vessels to 290 meters. With 337 reefer points, Mount Maunganui has a 21.6 thousand square meters of dry cargo storage area, 22.5 thousand square meters of cold stores, and 3.7 thousand square meters for general cargo and perishables. With 1010 reefer points, Sulphur Point has 22.5 thousand square meters for storage of dry cargoes and 7.2 thousand square meters of cold storage. Off-wharf storage can accommodate up to 115 thousand tons of petroleum products and 2.3 thousand tons of cement.

The Port of Tauranga Container Terminal at Sulphur Point is a 24-hour, 7-day service with an outstanding record of high productivity. It has dedicated rail and road access that makes it an important link in the MetroPort Auckland service. The container terminal was New Zealand’s first port facility to use the EDI booking system, and continual investment in technology is a key reason for the terminal’s ever-improving performance.

MetroPort Auckland is located in Auckland’s industrial belt. Some 150 kilometers northwest of the Port of Tauranga and connected by railway, MetroPort receives cargoes unloaded at the Port of Tauranga Container Terminal before distribution and aggregates export cargoes before they are railed to the Port of Tauranga. MetroPort contains a fresh produce quarantine inspection facility as well as fumigation and inspection areas. It contains a thousand ground slots that include 60 reefer points.

Three-quarters of the exports through the Port of Tauranga include forestry products, kiwifruit, and dairy products. Major destinations for these exports include the Pacific Islands, Japan, Southeast Asia, South Korea, and Australia. The major imports arriving at the Port of Tauranga include petroleum, coal, fertilizer, liquid and dry bulk, and palm kernel.

In 1914, the Port of Tauranga handled 20 thousand tons of cargo, the vast majority of that cargo being imported. By 1954, total cargo reached over 106 thousand tons of cargo, and three-quarters was exports. In 1964, cargo volume reached almost 930 thousand tons more evenly divided between exports and imports. Then in 1974, the Port of Tauranga handled more than 2.9 million tons of cargo, including 1.8 million tons of exports and 1.1 million tons of imports.

In 2008, the Port of Tauranga handled over 13.5 million tons of cargo, including 7.9 million tons of exports (58.5%) and 5.6 million tons of imports (41.5%). In 2008, the Port of Tauranga handled 582.1 thousand TEUs of containerized cargo. Asian countries made up the largest recipients of exported goods, with 4.3 million tons going to South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and a variety of Asian nations. Australia and the Pacific region received 1.5 million tons of exports, and 1.2 million tons were New Zealand coastal traffic.

The largest increase in exports went to the United Kingdom and Europe in 2008, and the largest decrease was in exports that were bound for South America. Most (46%) of the imports coming through the Port of Tauranga came from Asia (2.6 million tons), but Australia and the Pacific region were also major contributors of imports (1.1 million tons). Imports from the United Kingdom and Europe increased by almost 250% in 2008, though they were still a very small part of total imports.

Over half of the export cargoes leaving through the Port of Tauranga included logs and forest products, while oil products dominated (20%) imported cargoes (although “all other goods” made up the single biggest import cargo group, representing 63% of imports).

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