Closing Auckland\u2019s port will increase the cost of imports by between NZ$533m and NZ$626m a year, found the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research\u2019s (NZIER) new study, which looks at what would happen if Auckland\u2019s port was closed and freight had to be delivered to Auckland from distant ports.<\/p>\n
\u2018Location, location, location \u2013 The value of having a port in the neighbourhood\u2019 found multiple negative regional and national impacts such as over $1.2 billion a year in reduced GDP nationally, fewer exports (putting jobs at risk) and less investment.<\/p>\n
Ports of Auckland\u2019s CEO, Tony Gibson, said: \u201cSome people claim that closing Auckland\u2019s port would not increase prices, but this is not true. Currently, the price of imports through distant ports like Tauranga is kept low by competition. Think of it as the \u2018Gull effect\u2019 for ports. Just as opening a Gull petrol station lowers prices at stations nearby, having a port in Auckland keeps import prices low.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last month, Port Strategy<\/em> reported on NZIER\u2019s and international firm Castalia\u2019s reports, which examined the Economic Analysis of Upper North Island Supply Chain Scenarios carried out by consulting firm EY and produced as part of the second Upper North Island Supply Chain Strategy (UNISCS) Working Group report, which in October recommended the closure of POAL<\/a> to improve the country\u2019s supply chain. EY\u2019s report was labelled inadequate by the reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n Carbon emissions increase<\/strong><\/p>\n Closing Auckland\u2019s port will also increase carbon emissions because freight must travel further by land to reach market in Auckland. CO2 emissions will rise between 121,000t and 212,000t annually.<\/p>\n Mr Gibson added: \u201cI am also very concerned about the increase in carbon emissions that would be caused by using distant ports to handle Auckland\u2019s freight. This does not seem to be in line with the aims of the Zero Carbon Act, nor does it seem wise given the urgent need to tackle climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new study has revealed the cost of closing the Port of Auckland following the publication of two economic reports which the Ports of Auckland (POAL) said show that the idea of moving Auckland\u2019s port to Northland is \u201cseriously flawed\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":442,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oceania"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":443,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions\/443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}