The seasonal weekly service is scheduled to commence on March 7.

The first big ship to visit New Zealand, the 9600 20 foot container equivalent unit (TEU) Aotea Maersk, berthed in Tauranga last October, initiating Maersk Lines’ South America-New Zealand-North Asia service.

Full details of the new Hamburg-Sud service are not yet available, but it is understood it will operate the service with slightly smaller 7200 TEU vessels, during the kiwifruit harvest season.

“We are doing a peak season service for 21-22 weeks as a top-up for reefer capacity for the perishable exporters,” said Simon Edwards, Hamburg-Sud New Zealand general manager commercial.

The vessel would be routed to Port of Tauranga as part of its South America to North Asia service, with North Asian calls at Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and South Korea.

“It’s great that in addition to the Maersk big ships we’ve now got other shipping lines seeing the benefits of the economies of scale,” said Port of Tauranga chief executive Mark Cairns.

Chairman David Pilkington said the port welcomed the news. The moves by the two major shipping lines had proven conjecture by some in the industry that big ships would never call at Port of Tauranga, was wrong, he said.

That had been based on the fact that vessels with a draft exceeding 12.5m could not transit the strait, he added. But the new services were effectively adding a stopover on established South American/North Asian routes that do not pass through the strait.

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