CCHL chair Bryan Pearson acknowledged the work undertaken by the consortium.<\/p>\n
\u201cLyttelton Port is a strategic asset for the city and region, and there are diverse groups within our community with interests in its future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
However, Pearson said the proposal, as presented, fell short.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur assessment of the proposal, as presented, is it does not meet the threshold for ongoing consideration and is not sufficiently compelling to warrant further detailed investigation by CCHL, or additional consultation with [the] council, given its Letter of Expectation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company said Christchurch City Council\u2019s 2026\/27 Letter of Expectation explicitly does not support leasing the port and encourages retaining a directly employed workforce.<\/p>\n
CCHL said it also considered the Lyttelton Port Company\u2019s (LPC) improving operational and financial performance, along with advice from the company about the resilience of its infrastructure and the leadership needed to maintain safety and efficiency.<\/p>\n
The LPC has reported stronger financial results this year. <\/p>\n
In February, the company announced record half-year revenue of $108.5 million and net profit after tax of $14.6m for the six months to December 31.<\/p>\n
Pearson said CCHL continued to back the existing leadership team.<\/p>\n
\u201cCCHL maintains full confidence in the LPC board and management and their operation of the port, and continues to work closely with LPC in considering the port\u2019s long-term development and associated investment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Responding to the decision, T\u014dnui said it was disappointed Christchurch had \u201cmissed the opportunity to compare two fundamentally different futures\u201d for the port.<\/p>\n
The consortium said its proposal would have retained public ownership of Lyttelton Port while sharing investment risk and bringing international port expertise to Christchurch.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was never a proposal to privatise Lyttelton Port. It was a genuine partnership that retained public ownership, embedded mana whenua [local M\u0101ori] in the future of the port, reduced risk for Christchurch ratepayers and brought world-leading operational capability to New Zealand,\u201d T\u014dnui said.<\/p>\n
The consortium also questioned CCHL\u2019s reliance on Christchurch City Council\u2019s Letter of Expectation, asking whether \u201cthere ever was a genuine opportunity for an alternative partnership model to be assessed on its commercial merits\u201d.<\/p>\n
CCHL said it would not comment further on the details of the proposal because of commercial and confidentiality considerations.<\/p>\n
The T\u014dnui Consortium has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n
Ben Tomsett is a journalist based in Dunedin. He joined the Herald in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CCHL chair Bryan Pearson acknowledged the work undertaken by the consortium. \u201cLyttelton Port is a strategic asset for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[9331,4057,138,270279,4487,2199,23788,44301,14134,15159,9828,23943,157673,14724,21978,85915,12898,82258,270281,111,139,69,17177,29268,17159,38606,22049,2687,312,270280,61,1237,270282,1876],"class_list":["post-550679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-chance","tag-behind","tag-business","tag-cchl","tag-christchurch","tag-city","tag-consider","tag-consortium","tag-decision","tag-denied","tag-different","tag-entity","tag-fundamentally","tag-further","tag-futures","tag-holdings","tag-investigation","tag-lease","tag-lyttelton","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-operating","tag-port","tag-proposal","tag-rejected","tag-rejects","tag-saying","tag-says","tag-tnui","tag-to","tag-two","tag-unsolicited","tag-warrant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550679","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=550679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}