Ships on way to New Zealand
Toyofuji NZ says its vessels are still operating between Japan and New Zealand.
Blain Paterson, general manager of Toyofuji Shipping NZ, told Autofile Online: “The Ministry of Transport is allowing us to work, which is a good thing. Ships can still come through New Zealand and, therefore, go back to Japan and complete their assignments to Australia.
“We’ve got two ships at sea that are on their way here for mid-April that still have the same volume we normally deal with. Our vessels leave Japan with about 4,500 cars, with 3,000 of those for Australia leaving the rest for New Zealand ports. These shipments are made up of new and used cars.
“At the moment, our storage [at Ports of Auckland] is still going to plan. If used cars aren’t being delivered to compliance centres, which I believe they’re not at this stage, the vehicles will go to road transport storage yards.
“During the lockdown, I think every business around used-car buyers or shipping will be slowing down and, therefore, that will affect the ship volumes of cargo to be moved from Japan.”
Paterson adds used-car buying will hopefully start again when New Zealand gets out of Covid-19 lockdown. “At this stage, we don’t know if that will just be four, six, eight weeks or more,” he says. “It’s an unknown how long we will be in this situation and what’s going to happen afterwards, but shipping goes on 24/7 – and thankfully, when ships arrive, we’re allowed to go in.
“We are doing our social distancing in the office and have people on rotation working from home. That means we can still operate under Covid-19 protocols.”
