Find Freight, Shipping and Logistics expertise in New Zealand

Due to its geographical location and its history of British rule New Zealand’s freight and shipping industry is well established. Sea freight carries 99.5% of the country’s exports and 99.4% of its imports (2011).

The European Commission estimates that in 2010 New Zealand’s imports of machinery and equipment, vehicles and aircraft, petroleum, electronics, textiles and plastics from Australia, China and EU had a value of €22.8billion. Exports of dairy products, meat, wood and wood products, fish and machinery to Australia, China and EU were worth €23.2billion.

Pacifica Shipping and Strait Shipping are the largest domestic shipping companies providing coastal shipping services and shipping between the North and South islands; each port has a separate port authority under the Ministry of Transport. There are 13 major commercial ports throughout the country with the port of Auckland, spread out over three sites, being the country’s largest container port in terms of volume handling around 1,600 ship calls each year (2010). The Port of Auckland has a full range of port facilities including cargo handling, marine services and links to overland freight transport networks. New Zealand has 15 merchant marine vessels including bulk carriers, cargo vessels, chemical tankers, container vessels and petroleum tankers.

The large majority of New Zealand’s internal freight is carried by road, the rest by rail and coastal shipping. There are over 4,000km of railway and 93,911 km of roadway of which the majority is paved and nearly 200km is expressway.

Air New Zealand operates an international airfreight service to and from the country with the largest of over 130 airports being at Auckland which handled 76,313 tons of export cargo in 2009.

The World Bank Logistics Performance Index (LPI) scores countries on various aspects involved with shipping and logistics on a scale of one to five with five being the highest. New Zealand scored 3.42 placing it slightly below the average for the high income OECD group but still in a strong 31^st out of 155 countries worldwide (2012).

Global leaders for freight forwarding and courier services DHL, TNT, Fedex and TNT all operate directly in the country along with numerous local firms which also offer customs brokerage services.

The World Bank Logistics Performance Index (LPI) scores countries on various aspects involved with shipping and logistics on a scale of one to five with five being the highest. New Zealand ranks in the top 50 out of 155 countries for all aspects of LPI and places highest in customs (20^th) and tracking (27^th). It comes slightly lower down in infrastructure (29^th), shipment (33^rd), logistics (34^th) and timeliness (48^th).