Tauranga and Maersk in 10-year deal

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Surely the biggest container shipping deal the New Zealand market has ever seen. Two of the country’s largest shippers – diary producer Fonterra and meat producer Silver Fern Farms – through their supply chain joint-venture Kotahi Logistics have committed to pushing some 2.5m in exports through the port and onto Maersk’s ships. In return for the volume commitment from Kotahi, the three-way deal will see Maersk deploy larger ships, which Kotahi has been requesting for a while in search of better economies of scale for its exports, while Tauranga will invest in its facilities to handle the arrival of 6,500teu-sized vessels from Maersk.