The government will narrow down the shipyards vying to build the new Cook Strait ferries by the end of the month, but will only confirm a contract will be signed sometime “this year”.
A spokesperson for Rail Minister Winston Peters office said so far expressions of interest have been received from a large number of shipyards.
“By the end of March, following advice from our shipbroker, Ferry Holdings Ltd and the Treasury, the Government will shortlist shipyards, and issue more detailed ship specifications,” the spokesperson said.
The Government will then look at the options before selecting a shipyard.
“I can’t be more specific around that timeframe, but it will be this year.”
Among the interested parties are shipyards from Finland with the country’s ambassador Arto Haapea discussing it with Minister Peters this week.
“They have very strong track record of delivering different kinds of vessels for very demanding sea conditions around the world,” Haapea said.
“And as soon as we notice this, the launch of the Interislander renewal, we informed Finnish shipyards of this possibility and we got very interested, many, many signs of interest from them.”
Also interested are Hyundai from South Korea, who were building the iRex mega ferries until the project was axed. Peters met with them recently. “We know that they are seriously interested,” he said.
But that would be for a new contract and we’d still have to pay a large break fee to get out of the iRex contract.
Last year the Government set up a Ministerial Advisory Group who did a market study on who might build the new ships.
1News understands Stenna Roro’s E-Flexor ships were one front runner. Made in China it’s essentially a standard design that can be customised. Visentini out of Italy was another option.
The iRex project was axed in 2023 and Transporting New Zealand’s Dom Kalasih is concerned with how long the process is taking.
“From our perspective, the progress has really been too slow. You know there’s still a lot of uncertainty. That said, we do agree that they needed to put a halt to the iRex project.”
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the ships need to be rail-enabled.
“My concern is that if they go to two smaller ships, they’d actually be reducing our capacity on the Cook Strait at a time where we probably need to be increasing it,” Hipkins said.
