Posted on November 10, 2016
By Helen Tatham, The Timaru Herald
PrimePort Timaru and four other port companies will sign a 10-year deal with Dutch Dredging today.
The other four ports in on the deal are Napier, Taranaki, Lyttelton and Tauranga. The latter owns 50 per cent of PrimePort in Timaru.
PrimePort chief executive Phil Melhopt said the existing contract with New Zealand Dredging and General Works, also owned by a Dutch company Van Oord, expired.
The company searched for new suppliers and Dutch Dredging offered a competitive proposal, he said.
While Lyttelton is considered a competitor of PrimePort due to its geographic proximity to Timaru, Melhopt said “some things make sense to collaborate on and this is a good example of that”.
The contract will be signed in Auckland in the presence of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands and the Dutch and New Zealand Ministers of Economic Affairs, Henk Kamp and Steven Joyce.
The joint contract means a dredger could be stationed permanently in New Zealand over the term of the contract, which begins in September 2017.
Dutch Dredging is to deploy one of its trailing suction hoper dredgers ‘Albatros’ for the task.
Source: The Timaru Herald
