Bluebridge\u2019s FAF was currently at 37%, after peaking at 48% last month.<\/p>\n
Several South Island transport companies moving livestock, apples and wine said they were wincing at the new fees they expected to have to absorb.<\/p>\n
They expected fresh produce to be most impacted, as well as wine from Marlborough and livestock.<\/p>\n
FAF increase \u2018bad timing\u2019 for dairy farmers<\/p>\n
National Livestock Transport and Safety Council chairman Derek Foley said herds were shifting through late April and May, largely due to new farm or herd purchases and winter planning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s probably 50 or 60% more livestock transitioned over the ferry in this period of time through to early June than any other time through the year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo this is really bad timing to put a catch-up FAF on, disproportionately affecting the farmers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part of the Foley Transport empire in Waipukurau, he said dairy farmers would be particularly impacted in these busy months, ahead of more localised Moving Day movements on June 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a discussion that a lot of carriers are going to have over the next week or two as these movements start, and I suppose the washout of that\u2019s going to be extremely more expensive cartage on the ferry for the dairy farming industry that\u2019s transferring stock down South Island.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foley said transport companies and freight forwarders enforced their own weekly fuel adjustment factor early on in the war in the Gulf – which he described as \u201cevenly spread\u201d, peaking at 41% but now down to 27%.<\/p>\n
He said ferry operators increasing their surcharges only now, and at a comparatively high rate, would disproportionately affect rural cartage.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause the ferry companies are trying to recoup cost from earlier increases they hadn\u2019t done by applying a weekly FAF to their services, it sort of disproportionately impacted rural transport; that\u2019s the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the Interislander surcharge could cost farmers an extra $500 per sailing for a couple of hundred cattle from north to south, for example.<\/p>\n
In a statement on Tuesday, Rail Minister Winston Peters told RNZ the Interislander should not be expected to absorb fuel price increases.<\/p>\n
Ferry availability already \u2018concerning\u2019<\/p>\n
Several livestock firms speaking with RNZ said availability of the ferries was extremely challenging at present, with further disruption expected.<\/p>\n
Foley said it was working with the ferry companies to manage the Kai\u0101rahi being temporarily out of action for maintenance from next month.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a couple of issues with the strait; obviously, there\u2019s the lack of services and the concern with the maintenance programme that\u2019s going to be put in place, so it\u2019s even going to be less.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo scheduling livestock to get over and manage the welfare around that is pretty concerning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foley said a couple more ferries and better competition were needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t control that, but that\u2019s our dream.\u201d<\/p>\n
– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bluebridge\u2019s FAF was currently at 37%, after peaking at 48% last month. Several South Island transport companies moving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[40728,138,201473,12967,47117,2678,13489,28205,111,139,69,312,28206,16743,112,1533],"class_list":["post-415357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-affect","tag-business","tag-disproportionately","tag-farmers","tag-ferry","tag-fuel","tag-leader","tag-monique","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-says","tag-steele","tag-surcharge","tag-transport","tag-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}