Although Ports of Auckland (POAL) saw its 2021 first half revenue slightly fall to US$226.3 million (US$231.4 million in 2020 first half), POAL’s H1 net profit after tax was almost doubled during the current year, reaching US$45.6 million, compared to US$23 million in first six months of 2020.
However, underlying profit for the first six months of 2021 fell year on year by US$10 million to US$20.7 million, mostly “due to the Covid-19 response, the absence of cruise ships and the capacity throughput challenges in the container terminal,” according to the port’s announcement.
Regarding the operational results during the first half of the year, container throughput of New Zealand’s port decreased to 818,238TEU compared to 880,781TEU of 2020 H1.
“This year has been tough,” commented interim CEO, Wayne Thompson who went on to explain that “the combined impact of the pandemic and a fatal accident a year ago has had a heavy impact on our people and the business. At the container terminal, the result was congestion and reduced volume. At our multi-cargo terminal, we’ve seen significantly higher volumes despite pandemic-related shipping delays.”
Wayne Thompson talked about the upcoming steps for the port’s development, saying that “For the coming year, we are focused on getting the essentials right and putting the company back on track.”
He added, “We will continue the good work our teams have been doing to improve safety and develop a strong safety culture right across the business and we will focus on completing automation, and we’ll focus on safely getting productivity back to higher levels.”
In the meantime, POAL has announced a new plan to complete its automation project, which was paused after an incident revealed a potential safety risk. As the safety risk has been fixed, the port has restarted with a revised implementation plan.
The project will be implemented in four stages, with each one having milestones based on safety, reliability, productivity, and operational readiness.
Particularly, the stages are the following: Systems acceptance testing, Automation of part of Fergusson Terminal North Berth, Automation of all of Fergusson Terminal North Berth and Full automation of Fergusson Container Terminal (go-live).
