Napier Port To Showcase Operation Through MTG Sponsorship

Students will soon have a safe way to virtually view and explore a working port.

Napier Port announced today that it has become the naming rights sponsor of MTG Hawke’s Bay’s (Museum Theatre Gallery) new Education Suite for the next 10 years.

The Napier Port Education Suite is a curriculum-based facility for primary and secondary pupils. Over 8,000 students use the suite every year.

“We’ve long had a wish to improve community access to Napier Port through some form of education facility,” says its chairman Jim Scotland.

“The challenge has been how to overcome the Port’s safety-related access restrictions. The recent opening of MTG has provided us with the opportunity to do justice to the concept we’ve had in mind.”

Special education programmes focusing on Napier Port will be developed over the summer and offered to schools from mid-2014. These programmes, for primary and secondary schools, will showcase the contribution the Napier Port makes to the regional economy, and its national significance.

“Technology will enable pupils to observe a busy working port from the safety of the Education Suite,” says Napier Port chief executive Garth Cowie.

“Using video material as well as a direct link to the port’s extensive CCTV network, pupils will obtain a realistic view of life inside a port.”

As the oldest continuously operating business in Hawke’s Bay, Napier Port has been closely associated with many of the region’s founding families and businesses.

Some of that history has been captured in a new shipping database which contains details of every vessel to have called into Napier Port since 1895.

“Students will also be able to track down information on their forebears using this shipping database sited in the Education Suite,” says Cowie.

“It has a wealth of historic value which has not been publicly accessible until now”.

“We believe the shipping database and Education Suite will help demonstrate the breadth of role Napier Port has made, and will continue to make, to our region. Through our sponsorship we are delighted to build on our 120+ year contribution to Hawke’s Bay.”

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