The story
Auckland's trade, by virtue of being the (now) largest city of an island colony nation, has to a large degree always depended on its harbours. Starting from the original wharves in Commercial Bay in the 1840s, and expanding via the land reclamation schemes that transformed the whole of the Auckland waterfront throughout the 19th and 20th centuries (and still continue today, especially at Fergusson Wharf), the port became the largest of New Zealand (and has been since at least 1924, incidentally the same year the Port of Onehunga was opened).
19th century
The initial establishment of the harbour facilities in Commercial Bay and Official Bay suffered from the tidal mudflats that made establishing good wharves difficult. After control of the Waitematā Harbour passed to the Auckland Provincial Council in 1853, the Council did much work on improving the facilities, which included constructing the first Queen Street Wharf, building a quay along Customs Street and a breakwater at Point Britomart.
After the Auckland Harbour Board was established in 1871 by the council, further wharves were added and massive reclamation works were undertaken, eventually making Freemans Bay and Mechanics Bay lose their natural shoreline, while Commercial Bay (today the site of much of the Auckland CBD and the Auckland waterfront) was totally lost to history. The newly reclaimed land allowed the construction of a railway wharf and new dockyard facilities. New facilities were also built on the other side of the harbour, at Devonport, with the 'Calliope Dock' being the largest drydock in the southern hemisphere in 1888.
20th century
By the early 20th century, commercial and passenger traffic was already very busy, with large passenger liners from Europe and the United States arriving regularly. Though the Second World War collapsed the nascent tourist trade, the US entering the war in 1941 led to it basing a part of its fleet operations in Auckland, necessitating further expansion of the harbour facilities. In 1943 alone, 104 warships and 284 transports visited Auckland. During this time, 24/7 operations began.
After the war, the expansion continued, with the Import and Freyberg Wharves opening in 1961, as well as the creation of the Overseas Passenger Terminal on Princess Wharf. During the late 1960s, the massive, deep-draught Fergusson Wharf was established to serve the beginning container trade. While finished in 1971, it took until 1973 for the first container vessel to arrive, though the general container trend was not to avoid the port.
In 1985, the Harbour Board's computer system was broken into by a teenaged hacker. Although it was not the first hacking incident to be reported in New Zealand, it was one of the first to feature in a major TV news story.
Corporatisation
In 1988 the Auckland Harbour Board and operations of the port were corporatised and handed over to a newly formed company, Ports of Auckland, by Act of Parliament. The change in management increased productivity, but also led to substantial cuts in the directly employed workforce.
In October 1993 20% of the shares were floated to the public on the New Zealand sharemarket when the Waikato Regional Council sold its stake. On 1 April 2005 Auckland Regional Holdings, part of the former Auckland Regional Council, which held the remaining 80% of shares in the company, made a takeover offer at $8 a share. This gave the company a value of $848 million. The bid was successful, and the port is now 100% owned by the Auckland Council, successor of the Auckland Regional Council and other local authorities.
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From 2012 to 2019, Auckland Council Investments Limited (ACIL), the council-controlled organisation responsible for non-transport investment assets, managed the 100% share of Ports of Auckland Limited. In 2019, as part of the 10-year budget 2018-2028, ACIL was disestablished, its share holdings and functions were transferred to the council [2]
21st century
Now being the third largest container terminal in Australasia, as well as New Zealand's busiest port, little remains in terms of the original facilities. Even so, Ports of Auckland is still expanding and changing at a quick pace, with further reclamation worked planned to shift harbour operations further east, in connection with future needs as well as the plans for a more accessible Auckland waterfront.
In 2007, with a big increase in shipping traffic being projected (due to the Maersk shipping line choosing Auckland as a hub for the Fonterra export traffic), POAL considered a merger with Port of Tauranga, which did not come to pass. In the same year, volumes at the port rose 12.6% while profits, after deducting one-time items and property investments unrelated to the port operation, remained similar to 2006 (then NZ$55.9 million).
In its 2008 plan, POAL proposed to extend the Fergusson and Bledisloe terminals into one large area mainly intended for container handling. The change is to increase the port's capacity by 250%, and allow ships with up to 7,000 containers to use its facilities, where the current limit is about 4,000. The extension would include the purchase of even larger cranes, topping out at 94m, while containers on the wharf may be stacked as high as six-storey buildings.
In 2009, POAL noted that while container business in the past year had increased and profits in that sector had grown due to productivity gains and more consolidation of the industry towards larger ports like Auckland, there was a significant reduction in car import business due to the recession, which reduced the company's profits by 26% to $12.6m for the last half year to 31 December 2008.
From early 2010, Ports of Auckland has operated a new inland port / rail siding in Wiri to connect road freight to the port facilities via freight trains. The new facility allows Ports of Auckland to reduce the number of trucks that have to travel through the Auckland Central area by up to 100,000 trips a year.
On 30 June 2020, Ports of Auckland deployed a graphical planning solution. In August 2020 a falling container killed worker Pala'amo Kalati. A crane was lifting two containers, when a third container was accidentally lifted, and fell on Kalati. On 1 December 2023, Ports of Auckland was ordered to pay $561,000, along with $90,000 to Maritime New Zealand. There were also deaths in April 2022.
On 7 May 2024, Mayor of Auckland Wayne Brown abandoned plans to sell the Ports of Auckland on a long-term lease. Brown, Ports of Auckland chief executive Roger Gray and Maritime Union secretary Grant Williams signed an agreement for the Auckland Council to retain port lands, assets and operations. In addition the Ports agreed to return Captain Cook Wharf and Marsden Wharf to the Auckland Council, and to give the public greater access to Bledisloe Wharf. The Auckland Council and the council-controlled organisation Eke Panuku Development Auckland also developed a framework plan to redevelop Auckland's waterfront.
From Wikipedia’s article on Port of Auckland, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5