Brent Falvey: Cargo Owners Council Chair on the inefficiencies in New Zealand's port systems

Port inefficiencies could undermine New Zealand's goals to double export earnings.  

The Cargo Owners Council says there's been a 30% drop in productivity since 2019.  

Chair Brent Falvey says there needs to be a comprehensive reset of our ports and a strategy for the whole supply chain.  

He told Mike Hosking we just aren't keeping up with rest of the world.  

Falvey says New Zealand is in the bottom 20% for port efficiency.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
What you might have thought was a blast from the past.
We have supply chain issues at our ports for goodness
like crane rates are stuck at twenty twelve levels, which
undermindes our target to double exports by twenty thirty four. Obviously,
Brent Phillervey is the chair of the New Zealand Cargo
Owners Council and is with us. Brent, good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Good morning, Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
What's going on here? I thought we'd sorted all this
out well, Mike.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Here, as you probably know, there's more than four hundred
ports around the world, and New Zealand from a productivity
point of view, is in the bottle of twenty percent.
The majority of our ports are congested and poor productivity.
Since twenty nineteen, productivities declined by up to thirty percent
and costs have gone up and things are a mess.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Wow, they know all of this, And if I went
and talked to the heads of all these ports, they'd
understand that, and they'd say they're doing something about it
or not.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yes, yes, they do know about it. Obviously, Tarum has
been trying to do something about it for six years now.
It's still in court.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Isn't that a standard that's.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Pretty bad, Mike. I mean, I think I've spent something
night what twelve million dollars so far and haven't done anything.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Exactly the Auckland port the other day, they're going to
be building left, right and center. Is all that stuff helping?

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Well, well, well it kind of is. It's but that's
more as you know, to do with the cruise ships,
not so much the cargo ship.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Well, I thought the crane and one of the wolves
were going to be able to go up and down.
It was going to be a new tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Well, like I've got an Auckland, I've got eight cranes.
You really see more than four working in Often you
go down the port, you can see one crane working,
one ship on the berth. If they had four cranes,
we're going to be out seventy five percent faster.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
So why aren't we fi? Why aren't we running the country? Brent?
Doesn't sound that hard to me. You just get all
the cranes working all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Oh, that's that'd be a good point. But what we
think we need to do is actually have a reset.
We're talking to the government. We're saying we need to
have a hub and spoke model around the ports. The
hub is actually big deep sea ports that are really
efficient and the spoke with small ports moving cargo to
those those large ports, and it would be done by
coastal shipping would have to be hand in hand of

(01:57):
rail and road. I mean, you'll probably notice that some
good work done at rail. They've had a bit of
a reset. But to go to the next level for rail,
they need volume that will drive efficiencies and costs.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Do you reckon that's going to happen? Is it possible?

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Well, it has to. Might We think we've got five
years to go before we're really in trouble, and it's
five years to get them for structure. Right. We met
the government last week in a fact and we said
them the first thing that we need is dart We
need good data. We don't think you don't understand what
cargo is moving where and how, and so we need
to have really good data about that stuff. And then
we need to put a strategic lens across the whole

(02:33):
supply chain. That's that's from farm gate or forest gate
through to the ports.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
We sound like we're stuck in another in a time warp.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Well we kind of are. I mean, you automation is
the key. I know, I know that that's foiled in Auckland.
I don't know what they are modeled on. But then
if you look at someone who likes to Singapore, that's
so good and they're almost in a different planet.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
How many play feel Good on You're britt Nice to
talk to your brick for Felby's the chair of the
New Zealand Cargo Owners Council. How many people have come
on this program? Forget all the times I've set it,
but how many people have come on this program? Said,
I'll tell you what. If you look at Singapore, it's
almost like another planet. So small island nation, five million people, God,
how can it be? For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast,

(03:19):
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