JOINT MEDIA RELEASE

Number of pages: 02
Date: 04 April, 2013

Freight efficiencies key to Northland, nation’s success; study

The Whangarei District Council is playing a key role in a local authority bid to better understand the likely supply and demand for industrial land across the upper North Island.

The Whangarei District (WDC) and Northland Regional Councils (NRC) are members of the Upper North Island Strategic Alliance, a grouping of local authorities working collectively on economic and other issues of shared interest.

The group – whose membership also includes the mayors or chairs of the Bay of Plenty and Waikato Regional Councils, the Auckland Council and the Hamilton and Tauranga City Councils – is currently working to try to reduce the cost of doing business in the upper North Island.

It says the upper North Island is critical to the nation’s economic success and has just released the ‘Upper North Island Freight Story’, a 50-plus page summary of critical issues facing the area in its bid to try to deliver freight efficiencies.

More than 55 percent of the nation’s freight currently travels through the Northland, Auckland, Waikato and Bay of Plenty regions which collectively generate more than 50% of New Zealand’s gross domestic product (GDP).

The combined freight volume in those areas is expected to double by 2035 and the summary identifies seven critical issues (based on feedback from representatives of multiple sectors) across a range of areas which it believes need to be addressed to deliver freight efficiencies.

These in turn should reduce costs and lead to both cheaper goods for consumers as well as offering a much-needed competitive advantage to importers and exporters.

The critical issues range from strategic road and rail networks to a lack of shared and accurate data and complex local and central government funding structures it believes are impeding smart investment decisions.

Members of the alliance have been allocated various responsibilities to try to address the issues and in the Whangarei District Council’s case, it has been tasked with supporting its Hamilton City counterpart on a project to better understand the likely supply and demand for industrial land across the upper North Island.

The WDC’s alliance representative, Deputy Mayor Phil Halse, says there’s a need to understand this – at a local district level, regionally and across the entire upper North Island – including the amount, type and location of industrial land.

“This information is vital so that public investment can be provided and staged at appropriate times.”

Mr Halse says over the next 12 months the Hamilton and Whangarei councils will scope a specific piece of work to gain a realistic understanding for industrial land in the upper North Island.

The information gathered will feed into a wider shared evidence base relating to the seven critical issues which will be used as a reference by the various players when making future freight-related decisions.

Meanwhile, NRC Chairman Craig Brown says as well as the critical issues, the summary also contains a one-page regional wrap up for Northland identifying its current and emerging significant industries and infrastructure as they relate to freight.

Forestry (wood, timber and processing) is the most significant current regional industry, followed by agriculture/horticulture (dairy, beef, avocado and kumara) as both current and/or emerging current industries. Manufacturing (including fuel, cement and clay) rounds out the third place, again as both current and/or emerging industries.

Mr Brown says infrastructurally, a nationally strategic road and rail network is the most significant current regional infrastructure on a freight basis, followed by Northport, the Marsden Pt oil refinery and its associated pipeline.

He says the regional summary also reveals Northland is New Zealand’s eighth most populated region with its $5 billion GDP equivalent to 2.6% of the nation’s total.

Its 158,200 people (as of June 2011) make up 3.6% of New Zealand’s overall population and its 64,136 employed people 3% of the national total.

“Overall, while there are probably very few surprises in the regional summary, it’s certainly useful to have this information documented in one place as part of the wider freight story summary,” Messrs Brown and Halse say.

Copies of the ‘Upper North Island Freight Story’ are available from the ‘transport publications’ section of the regional council’s website via: www.nrc.govt.nz/transport

ENDS

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