have been cancelled<\/a> on Tuesday, due to strong winds and high swells.<\/p>\nDownlands Deer general manager Kris Orange said he relied on ferries up to five times a week to move livestock between the North and South Islands.<\/p>\n
“It’s pretty critical we know what’s going on and, with the number of ferries dropping off, it has made it more tricky,” he said.<\/p>\n
On Monday, one of his trucks was scheduled to cross Cook Strait with cattle, but the Bluebridge Connemara ferry broke down and the sailing was rescheduled for Tuesday – and then cancelled, due to weather.<\/p>\n
This has knock-on effects. After dropping off the stock, he was meant to pick up other animals, which now have to wait longer.<\/p>\n
Orange said there was nothing anyone could do about the weather, but there was little flexibility in the system.<\/p>\n
Interislander’s working fleet has dropped to a single ferry – Kai\u0101rahi – for the next couple of months.<\/p>\n
“We just don’t have the number of ferries to choose from to get loads away, because there’s not as many ferries sailing.<\/p>\n
“We have to take what we can get as far as crossing times and, quite often, that doesn’t really match up with what we want to do.”<\/p>\n
Unreliable and reduced crossings cost time and money, he said.<\/p>\n
Orange explained, if there was a ferry cancellation, paddocks needed to be rented for the animals – or they needed to go back to the farm, if no facilities were available.<\/p>\n
“I’d hate to think what it costs in money terms. I mean, there’s drivers’ wages and diesel and things, but it all adds up to a cost and it’s basically dead money for everybody.”<\/p>\n
Orange told RNZ he had to hope there were no “blowouts” with current ferries.<\/p>\n
“If something catastrophic was to happen to one of those ferries and it was out of action for more than a few days, it would be disastrous for the livestock industry that does rely on shipping stock north and south, both to freezing works and for breeding purposes.”<\/p>\n
He said everyone was waiting for newer ferries to join the fleet.<\/p>\n
A Kiwirail spokesperson said Interislander was operating a planned one-ship timetable, while Kaitaki underwent scheduled drydock maintenance in Singapore. Kaitaki was due to return to service on 27 September.<\/p>\n
They said Interislander only cancelled sailings for safety or operational reasons.<\/p>\n
“Safety is always our first priority. If sailings are disrupted due to weather or an operational issue, we work to rebook customers on the next available sailing.”<\/p>\n
The spokesperson said freight was a core part of Interislander’s role.<\/p>\n
“We continue to work closely with customers to manage available capacity, and support the movement of essential and time-critical freight during this period.”<\/p>\n
Bluebridge has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story has been updated to clarify the ferry that broke down was a Bluebridge ferry Livestock transporters…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-572885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572885","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=572885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}