Port Of Auckland Fee Increases Cause Concern For Industry

National road freight association Transporting New Zealand is voicing strong concerns over the Port of Auckland's (POAL) announced increases to Vehicle Booking System (VBS) fees, warning these price hikes at the country’s largest import port will have major repercussions for businesses and consumers.

Trucks have been charged $130 per visit in access fees to the container terminal during peak hours since January 2025. This will increase to $180 in January 2026, $230 by July 2026 and $350 by January 2027. These fees are levied each time a truck accesses the terminal to deliver or collect a container.

Billy Clemens, Head of Policy & Advocacy at Transporting New Zealand, is questioning the justification for these large increases, noting that POAL’s productivity improvements have been minimal.

"Our road freight members and their customers haven’t seen an associated increase in Port productivity," he says.

"In fact, from financial year 2023 to 2024 POAL’s average truck turnaround time improved by only 1.5 per cent, or 17 seconds. I don’t know of any road freight companies who could hike their prices by 170 per cent over two years following that level of performance."

Clemens also challenges POAL's rationale that higher peak-time fees will incentivise off-peak deliveries.

" Traffic data confirms that our members already do their best to avoid peak traffic because it’s a nightmare in Auckland as it is. If they could, they would."

"A survey by one of our major North Island members revealed that only 12 per cent of their customers could accept night-time deliveries of containers."

Transporting New Zealand is warning that these increased costs will inevitably be passed on to consumers and exporters, making New Zealand goods less competitive on the international stage. All at a time when the Port is already comfortably surpassing its profit targets.

Productive alternatives

Clemens urges POAL and its owner, Auckland Council, to focus on enhancing productivity and performance rather than imposing higher fees on industry stakeholders.

"One practical option we’ve previously raised with POAL is to lower VBS charges for dual bookings, where a freighter both drops off and picks up containers on the same trip."

"If POAL wants to improve productivity, it should also look to its 2024 Annual Report. POAL was comfortably meeting its peak vs off-peak truck target, but failing on crane rate, ship rate, and import dwell time, amongst others."

Cargo owners share concern at price increases

Mike Knowles, chair of the New Zealand Cargo Owners Council, says the time-of-use approach is too simplistic to achieve significant behaviour change as the port is just one part of a complex supply chain.

The Cargo Owners Council believes it is time for benchmarking of NZ port productivity against their charge structures.

"We think the time is long overdue for a closer look at arbitrary fee increases that do not result in measurable service or infrastructure improvement - as things stand the ultimate loser here is NZ Inc."

About Ia Ara Aotearoa Transporting New Zealand

Ia Ara Aotearoa Transporting New Zealand is the peak national membership association representing the road freight transport industry. Our members operate urban, rural and inter- regional commercial freight transport services throughout the country.

Road is the dominant freight mode in New Zealand, transporting 92.8% of the freight task on a tonnage basis, and 75.1% on a tonne-km basis. The road freight transport industry employs over 34,000 people across more than 4700 businesses, with an annual turnover of $6 billion.

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