{"id":70114,"date":"2026-01-30T18:03:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T21:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shipping.einnews.com\/article\/888054598"},"modified":"2026-01-30T18:03:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T21:03:07","slug":"shipping-giant-adds-dunedin-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/2026\/01\/30\/shipping-giant-adds-dunedin-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Shipping giant adds Dunedin service"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Apples, timber, meat and more will soon have a direct shipping link to China from Dunedin for the first time since 2020.<\/p>\n

From Wednesday, MSC \u2014 the world\u2019s largest container shipping company \u2014 will include Port Chalmers as a stop on its shipping route linking New Zealand and China via Australia.<\/p>\n

Port Otago customer general manager Craig Usher said the news was “big” and represented new export and import capacity for Otago and Southland.<\/p>\n

“It takes a long time to get the stars to align, to get a service to come in.”<\/p>\n

Port Chalmers\u2019 inclusion in MSC\u2019s Asia-Oceania network meant Dunedin would now have a direct flow of products to and from North Asia, Mr Usher said.<\/p>\n

Port Otago previously had access to a CMA CGM-operated service, which was withdrawn in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

“They basically ran out of vessels and had to rejig networks.<\/p>\n

“We had one here for about 10 years, hence getting it back is going to be great.”<\/p>\n

Customers valued having options and the ability to “pick a few things off the shelf if you can”.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s great. You want to have these things for customers.”<\/p>\n

Exports leaving Port Chalmers would include meat, timber, dairy, apples and seafood \u2014 “the full spread”, Mr Usher said. <\/p>\n

For the past two years, MSC serviced Port Chalmers via a trans-ship service to Tauranga, utilising its Oceania 2 loop service.<\/p>\n

Wellington\u2019s port would now act as a hub for MSC, containers transferring on to MSC\u2019s new “Eagle” services to the Americas and Europe.<\/p>\n

Mr Usher said Port Chalmers\u2019 inclusion in the New Zealand-China route, called the “Wallaby” service, would definitely add capacity to the Otago and Southland network.<\/p>\n

“But also the new capacity MSC has brought in with that Eagle service out of Wellington, that means they’ve almost doubled their capacity in the region on those two services.”<\/p>\n

Port Otago already had direct-product access to Australia, Southeast Asia \u2014 with other carriers \u2014 and the Americas, he said.<\/p>\n

Federated Farmers Otago president Luke Kane said it was hard not to see the news as anything other than a positive.<\/p>\n

“If it’s giving Otago and southern farmers more access to market more directly, then bloody hard to find a bad thing about it, right?”<\/p>\n

Any faster access to markets of those types would be welcomed, he said.<\/p>\n

MSC said it could not respond to a request for comment before deadline.<\/p>\n

tim.scott@odt.co.nz<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/strong> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… will soon have a direct shipping<\/span> link to China from Dunedin … \u00e2\u0080\u0094 the world\u00e2\u0080\u0099s largest container shipping<\/span> company \u00e2\u0080\u0094 will include Port Chalmers … as a stop on its shipping<\/span> route linking New Zealand and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}