Annual Report
Access Maritime NZ's latest Annual Report, and archived copies from previous years.
Annual report 2024/2025
The annual report outlines progress against the plans and measures detailed in the Statement of Intent and Statement of Performance Expectations.
Our year in review
Progress through collaborative partnership and working smarter
Tēnā koutou
As a kaitiaki (guardian) of Aotearoa New Zealand’s ports, oceans and waterways, Maritime NZ works to deliver Safe, Secure, Clean and Sustainable outcomes for New Zealanders.
In 2024/25, we achieved meaningful progress across several priorities. This is reflected throughout the report, particularly under the sections addressing the Government and Minister’s expectations, as well as through our harm prevention programmes and cross-sector initiatives. Highlights are noted below.
We have continued to digitise, making it easier to interact with us
We launched our new online notification form, which has been well received by stakeholders to quickly report events or incidents. The form is accessible on any device: mobile, tablet or computer. We introduced an automatic advisory process for Maritime Transport Operator Certificate renewals, sending reminders to operators six and three months before expiry. We have also made good progress on simplifying and digitising our seafarer applications, with the support of users from the sector.
Good results from implementation of our regulatory approach
An important focus over the year has been the implementation of our new risk-based regulatory approach. This has involved developing policies, processes and practices that support better risk-based triage of events and regulatory decision-making, including the use of broader corrective and enforcement tools. One new tool, voluntary agreements, has enabled us to work more informally with operators to address issues and has been particularly effective in delivering positive safety results this year.
The newly established Notifications and Enquiries team and after-hours function have enabled timely response to notifications and decisions to release scenes quickly after a harm event. This has increased awareness of the status of notifications, and why and how we triage and respond to them. We are receiving positive feedback from the sector in support of these changes.
Our proactive harm prevention programmes that partner with the sector have also performed well. It is promising to see that fatalities in the commercial sector have continued to decline since 2021/22.
Notably, we successfully extended our health and safety designation across New Zealand’s 13 major commercial ports, working with the Port Health and Safety Leadership Group. We also launched the Approved Code of Practice for the Loading and Unloading of Cargo at Ports and on Ships with the Port Health and Safety Leadership Group.
We have worked hard to strengthen relationships with the commercial fishing sector, including forming the New Zealand Fishers Health and Safety Leadership Group to drive sector-wide improvements. Additionally, we launched the Bluefin Tuna Safety Project to provide safety information to recreational tuna fishers who may be operating too close to commercial fishing vessels.
In the recreational craft sector, we delivered our first-ever winter Kia Mataara marketing campaign, titled “Better Your Odds”, to highlight the heightened risks recreational users face outside of the summer boating season. The campaign aimed to raise awareness of the severe consequences that can occur during winter if something goes wrong and illustrates the novel approaches taken by our recreational craft harm prevention programme.
Supporting an efficient, innovative and sustainable maritime sector
Through our regulatory amendment programme, we undertook two rule amendment projects. These address rules that we and the sector identified as being not fit for purpose, outdated or impeding efficient operation of the sector and delivery of outcomes.
Other initiatives to support a sustainable maritime sector included progress on our maritime workforce and new and low carbon technology initiatives. The maritime workforce initiative made traction on short-term improvements on seafarer certification, as sought by the sector. It has also had a major role in ensuring maritime sector needs are understood and catered for as part of our skills reform. The initiative to support uptake of new and low carbon technologies progressed with the development of a new technology pathway and rules relating to lithium batteries.
Maritime incident readiness and response
Our multi-year readiness and response programme has worked to strengthen search and rescue operations. This included establishing a new fifth watch at the Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand, establishing essential safety infrastructure, building foundational geospatial and domain awareness tools, and ensuring our capability and capacity to respond effectively to oil spills.
The programme was challenged over the year, when, in our lead and supporting role, we responded to real maritime events. These included the groundings of the Aratere ferry and Manahau barge, and the sinking of HMNZS Manawanui off the south coast of Samoa. These responses provided valuable lessons that were incorporated into our incident readiness response programme and reaffirmed our ability to rapidly activate and deploy maritime response capabilities in complex and evolving scenarios. In the coming year, we will develop a singular, integrated maritime incident response strategy.
Realising the benefits of changes to our operating model
Due to the reduction in cruise and cargo activity around the New Zealand coast, we experienced a levies shortfall in 2024/25. We were able to respond, however, through careful planning and targeted savings. This was possible because of the work we have done to improve our operating model over more recent years, as well as the prudent use of reserves.
We would like to take the opportunity to thank the staff of Maritime NZ for all their hard work, and we thank the sector for the ongoing collaboration on which all our outcomes depend.
Ngā mihi nui
Meeting the Government's priorities
Meeting our Minister’s expectations
Each year, our Minister sets expectations for the next financial year. For 2024/25, the then Associate Minister of Transport, Hon Matt Doocey, issued a Letter of Expectations to the Maritime NZ Board that emphasised the main priorities for Maritime NZ, including fiscal sustainability, a sharpened focus on core functions, and resilience and security. These priorities, together with the enduring expectations, informed the development of our 2024/25 Statement of Performance Expectations.
Enduring Letter of Expectations for statutory Crown entity boards
As a Crown entity, we recognise the Enduring Letter of Expectations of Minister of Finance, Hon Nicola Willis, dated April 2024. The letter highlights the importance of maximising funding value, understanding costs and outcomes, and adopting evidence-based continuous improvement. It also emphasises clear accountability for performance in a challenging fiscal environment.
Contributing to the Government’s nine targets
While Maritime NZ does not lead any of the nine government public sector targets, it actively contributes to them, such as Target 9: Reduced net greenhouse gas emissions. For example, we recently led the implementation of MARPOL Annex VI (International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships), which aims to reduce marine pollution.
Sustainability is embedded in our operations through initiatives such as:
- transitioning around 70 percent of our light vehicle fleet to electric vehicles
- enhancing sustainability in air travel processes
- converting lighthouses to solar power where feasible
- strengthening greenhouse gas data and reporting for strategic decision-making
- encouraging staff engagement through a dedicated sustainability group.
Facilitating innovation and growth in the maritime sector
Our 2024/25 work programme reflects government priorities in innovation and economic growth. The maritime sector contributes $7.7 billion to the economy, underpins nearly all imports and major exports, and requires safe, efficient operations.
Maritime NZ delivers wide-ranging benefits through:
- supporting New Zealand’s shipping supply chain in safe passage of exports and imports (99.7 percent by volume by sea) by discouraging poor quality ships and unsafe activity on ports, and by supporting port security enhancements
- enabling adoption of innovative technology through our new and low carbon technologies initiative
- advocating internationally through bodies such as the International Maritime Organization on behalf of New Zealand and the region to ensure supply chains are sustainable and efficient
- reducing the societal, economic and environmental costs of harm through our regulatory activity and harm prevention programmes
- our ongoing rules programme, which ensures rules are fit for purpose and enable efficient operation, as well as delivering outcomes, including those relating to seafarer certification as part of our wider certification and licensing improvement programme
- taking a long-term view of ensuring the sector has a capable, well-trained and sustainable workforce through our maritime workforce initiative
- enhancing the online experience of the maritime sector through our digitisation work programme, with the development of ‘MyMNZ’, our digital front door, and a new notification and enquiries online form and centralised function to receive, triage and manage notifications and enquiries.
Our effectiveness and efficiency as a regulator
We have focused on delivering better results and improved public services, while working within tight financial constraints.
The 2024/25 year marked the beginning of a three-year cycle following the 2024 maritime levies review. During the review, sector feedback shaped our priorities, and we have made good progress over the year towards these, with positive sector feedback. Priorities included:
- building our maritime inspections capacity to identify and respond to substandard shipping through the dedicated Maritime Inspections team, with more coverage across New Zealand. This has resulted in increased inspections and more deficiencies and non-conformities being identified and addressed, reducing risk in our waters. Early signals show that increased inspections have led to a reduction in deficiencies among vessels that regularly visit New Zealand. We are identifying more vessels with quality issues than we would have previously, thereby improving safety and minimising risk of catastrophic harm
- improving maritime and marine rules to remove unnecessary compliance and/or cost, as well as ensuring rules enable new technologies and efficient and effective operations. We are progressing two omnibus regulatory amendment packages to address small to medium-sized issues across multiple rules, with two-longer term critical reform projects. These are being prioritised with the sector and have been well received because they will reduce costs, remove pain points and enable better sector outcomes. We are also making progress on legislative reform with the Ministry of Transport
- enhancing our processes of notifications and enquiries so people know when to notify, can do so easily, receive a prompt response and action appropriate to the event, and scenes are not held for longer than they should be, minimising business disruption. This work has involved implementing a new online notification form and establishing a small notifications and enquiries team and after-hours triaging model, along with a triage policy with service level requirements. This has resulted in the most serious or urgent notified events receiving an initial response from us within four hours, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Stakeholders have noted improved timeliness and communication in our responses and greater awareness of how their notification has been responded to and why
- continuing to improve our seafarer and operator certification processes which has resulted in improved processing times, even with increasing application volumes. The additional capacity from the levy review has provided greater technical support regarding improvements to rules, improved operational policy, the establishment of a review panel for decisions, and the progression of our programme to digitise seafarer certification. The multi-year improvement programme is also supported by a maritime operators’ group, which will be involved in user testing on digital processes. The feedback received is that we are listening, and stakeholders are seeing improvements
- strengthening effective oversight of third parties that undertake critical regulatory functions on behalf of Maritime NZ, to ensure confidence in the quality and consistency of the third parties undertaking regulatory activities. During the year we established a dedicated function and small team who have developed a framework for oversight, and identified three initial priority areas using a risk-based approach. The oversight of recognised surveyors has been the initial focus, with the first phase of information gathering and analysis well under way
- embedding our regulatory approach through proactive partnership and harm prevention programmes and response work. Stakeholders have been supportive of this balanced and proactive regulatory approach.
Managing through Maritime Levy revenue shortfall in 2024/25
The 2024 review of the Maritime and Oil Pollution levies was based on levy modelling supported by Treasury, other economic forecasts for cargo and oil, and international cruise ships. Economic conditions have, however, meant import growth is much slower, and a substantial reduction occurred in cruise ship visits to New Zealand in 2024/25, which resulted in a significant levy shortfall.
Maritime NZ has addressed this levy shortfall through savings and use of reserves, while still aiming to meet the expectations of the sector, as agreed in the 2024 levy review. These savings were possible because of the efficiency and effectiveness work that Maritime NZ has undertaken on its operating model over the past few years. This has included:
- consolidation of property in Wellington and reducing costs in satellite offices through partnering with other government agencies
- rigorous prioritisation of international and domestic travel, noting we still need to travel to undertake our role
- a reduction in contractors to 3.7 percent of operating costs, which are focused primarily on digitisation and technology to drive efficiencies (we have no other discretionary spend)
- digitization of internal and external processes to deliver cost savings and enhance productivity for us and the sector
- careful management of remuneration and vacancies
- more efficient delivery of training, which is necessary for roles.
Case study one
Approved Code of Practice for the Loading and Unloading of Cargo at Ports
Loading and unloading cargo is one of the most dangerous activities on a port and is where most of the injuries and fatalities in New Zealand ports have occurred.
The Approved Code of Practice for Loading and Unloading Cargo at Ports and on Ships (ACOP) came into effect on 29 November 2024 and replaces all other existing industry codes of practice related to stevedoring.
The ACOP has formal standing under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 and was launched by the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety and the Associate Minister of Transport.
Hon Brooke van Velden, Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, was pleased to support the launch. “I want to see more of this collaborative, data-driven approach to health and safety which focuses on the key risks that harm people. The ACOP shifts the focus from mere compliance to addressing the root causes of workplace harm. By identifying and mitigating these causes, we get to the heart of what is hurting people and have a better chance of preventing harm,” the Minister said.
Developing an ACOP was one of the main actions recommended by the Port Health and Safety Leadership Group, which comprises leaders from port, stevedoring and union organisations, and Maritime NZ, to address inconsistency and provide base-level safety standards.
In its Port Sector Insights Picture and Action Plan, the Leadership Group highlighted the inconsistency of practice across the sector, including critical risk management, training, communication, worker engagement, and reporting of safety incidents.
Sector support and buy-in
Port Industry Association Chair Pat Kirk said development of the ACOP had been strongly supported by the port sector. While it involved a large amount of work and effort from the sector, collective buy-in to it has been achieved. This is the first time he’s “seen industry, unions and regulator come together so successfully. It’s unique, special, powerful. If we individually tried to achieve this we would have failed,” he said.
Demonstrating the level of buy-in, and the collaborative approach taken, the ACOP took only 15 months to develop. Port of Auckland Chief Executive Roger Gray said the ACOP, for the first time, codified health and safety duties for port companies and all their workers. “The speed at which we’ve seen this produced shows the will of the industry to do better, and their belief in the vision to make ports a safer place to work,” he said.
Case study two
Supporting the re-float of the Manahau
On Father’s Day, 1 September 2024, the community around Carters Beach, near Westport, awoke shocked to find that the nearly 100 metre Manahau barge was stricken on the sand. But, following a successful response operation, the emergency towage vessel MMA Vision supported the re-float of the barge five days later.
The Manahau grounded around midnight after attempting to wait out heavy weather conditions off Westport. It had 11 crew on board and was not carrying cargo.
The West Coast of the South Island is a long-standing mining region, and the recent arrival of the Manahau was an exciting development for many people in the region. Buller Mayor Jamie Cleine said, “it was a shock for the community seeing it on the beach after sunrise that Sunday morning. Word quickly spread and it became the biggest talking point and attraction in Westport”.
Leading the Government’s response
Maritime NZ quickly deployed a team of six specialist response personnel to Westport to liaise with the operator, their insurers and the salvor to assess and review the salvage plans, ensure the welfare of the crew on board, and support local authorities with information to the Westport community. They were led by the National Maritime Response Team (NMRT) under the National Maritime Controller based in Wellington.
In consultation with West Coast Regional Council and Buller District Council, Maritime NZ declared the grounding a Tier 3 incident, meaning we were the lead national agency. The Maritime Emergency Coordination Centre in Westport was led by a Maritime NZ National On Scene Commander, and included legal, operations, planning, safety and public information management functions.
Mayor Cleine said Maritime NZ’s response team provided much-welcomed support. “As a small council, it was great getting national level support from Maritime NZ. They kept us up to date and the support its operational personnel provided was greatly appreciated,” Mayor Cleine said.
Back in Wellington at the Emergency Operations Centre, the NMRT led, oversaw and coordinated the operation, liaising with the ship owner, operators, insurers and salvor. This included obtaining independent salvage advice and providing advice to the Minister and other interested agencies. The NMRT also worked with West Coast Regional Council, Buller District Council and stakeholders, including the Nelson and Tasman harbourmasters and Port Nelson, to provide oversight of the salvage and tow plans and the passage back to Nelson.