The first trip on the new coastal shipping route known as the ‘blue highway’ was successfully completed when Rangitata docked in Napier with its load of containers about 6pm on Wednesday.

The container ship was the first to dock at Gisborne in over forty years and headed back to Napier carrying 13 refrigerated containers of meat from Affco in Wairoa and squash from LeaderBrand in Gisborne.

“It’s been a great initiative for the government to get behind and fund for 3 months initially, and it’s definitely helping some exporters around Gisborne and Wairoa get their products to Napier Port to export that would normally come by road,” a spokesperson for Napier Port said.

The emergency coastal shipping route between Gisborne and Napier was funded to the tune of $2.75 million after Cyclone Gabrielle damaged the region’s roads and rail infrastructure.

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Eastland Port operations manager Andy Kinsella said was the port’s first time dealing with regular container shipments and staff had to be trained to deal with new skills and products, he said.

“Over the next few months, we’re looking to do two visits to Gisborne and then two visits to Napier a week … it will start to give us some momentum.”

The Eastland Port’s wharf seven was being rebuilt and due to be completed by July. That would include making space for a dedicated coastal shipping berth to avoid overlap with other shipping commitments.

After the last container ship arrived forty years ago, Eastland Group chief operating officer for regional infrastructure Andrew Gaddum​ said it’s been a rapid re-adjustment.

“We didn’t have the onshore infrastructure here because we’ve almost exclusively dealt with logging ships. So we’ve had to get that at quite short notice.”

“We also have a large mobile harbour crane that we’ve fitted with container spreader. Training staff has been pretty intensive but we’ve had experienced assistance from around the country come to us to make sure it all goes smoothly.”

Gaddum said that despite SH2 through the Waioeka Gorge being open, it’s still a very volatile route.

“It has been closed before and it’s still pretty vulnerable. We’re always watching that road but if we get this right, we know we can do the Gisborne to Tauranga route if in future, State Highway 2 becomes impassable that way.”

Gaddum said the response from suppliers and exporters in the region had been “overwhelmingly positive”, they’re still waiting to see how the first few journeys have gone.

“We’re expecting pretty strong interest but I think for now, people are waiting to see how the system works and once reliability have been proven, people should start lining up to use it.”

Coastal shipping has been on the national agenda before Gabrielle, with a $30m funding injection through the National Land Transport Programme in June last year.

Gaddum said he believed the ship had a future beyond Gisborne’s highway access being restored.

“Coastal shipping is where a lot of freight will go to in future if you consider the cost and the carbon miles to market.

“We think it has legs beyond this period.”

Rangitata will be loaded with 17 empty containers for the next trip and is due to arrive in Gisborne on Friday.