As of Monday 30th March we will be introducing additional measures to identify and assist in the movement of ‘essential’ medical, pharmaceutical and food stuffs cargoes through the Port.

In order to ensure that your application is processed in a timely manner, please follow the guidelines outlined below:

• Application form for Priority Container Delivery, that must be completed fully and returned to Customer Service 72 hours prior to vessel discharge. Failure to do so may cause delays in the processing of your application and or priority delivery of your container.

• The form must be submitted during Customer Service working hours to allow for timely processing:

• Monday to Friday 07:00hrs to 19:00hrs
• Saturday 07:00hrs to 15:00hrs

In response to COVID-19 and to assist the industry with any potentially distressed import containers affected by the lockdown, Ports of Auckland has decided to repurpose the area that is currently used to store empty containers (Link) to long term import storage. For this reason, Link services will be suspended from 13 April and until further notice.

These changes will only affect empties delivered to the port for storage and not for export. Export empties will continue to be accepted by Fergusson Terminal through the main truck grid.

Here is the intended time line of this change:

• Starting from Monday 30th March we will no longer accept import containers de-hires to Link facility via road/rail.
• Link services will be completely suspended from Monday 6th April, however we will continue to support export flow of empty containers to the nominated vessels. We remind Shipping Lines to please be proactive in planning your export empty volumes to vessels well in advance so we can put in place arrangements with Empty Depots and Empty Carriers to receive these units into the Port in a timely manner.
• From Monday 13th April Link capacity will be diverted, as a precaution, to long term import storage containers affected by COVID-19. Please note that with the announcement by Government today that they will allow non-essential goods to be unpacked into storage only, to enable the ongoing flow of critical cargoes and exports, then this long term storage for import containers may not be needed. We will however continue to monitor this very closely.

We request that Shipping Lines that use Link facility for storage please start clearing their empty stocks with the aim to have all containers completely removed by no later than 0600 hours on Monday 13th April 2020. Please ensure that import containers that are yet to be dehired to Link have been updated with return location other than Link.