Port of Tauranga is celebrating handling one million containers across its wharves next Tuesday.

The on-wharf celebration for about 100 board members, staff, shipping company senior management and shippers' senior executives marks a milestone reached on June 6.

The port company predicted the one million milestone in the half-year result on December 31.

Chairman David Pilkington said by December 31 the port was already past half way, having lifted more than 510,000 twenty foot equivalent container units.

The achievement is the direct result of the port's five-year $350 million infrastructure investment programme, which extended the Port's freight hinter-land across the country, prepared the port for large ships and provided importers and exporters with highly-efficient routes to the country's most important markets, says David.

The one millionth TEU crossed the wharf on June 6.

'It happened a bit quicker than we thought, though we had a fairly strong start to the year,” says CEO Mark Cairns.

The deeper port is attracting more big ships. They started with the first Maersk ‘S' class ship with a 9,500TEU capacity last October.

'We've actually had vessels as big as 11,000TEU calling in, but fairly recently Hamburg Sud also announced a seasonal peak service using 7,500TEU deep-drafted vessels that are only calling at Tauranga in New Zealand,” says Mark.

'The has been an organic growth in existing cargoes, but most of that rapid increase over the last five years has been through the transshipment or us emerging as the hub port and we are getting cargo from other locations around New Zealand.

'I would say a good eighty per cent of that would be though that transshipment phenomena.”

The Bay of Plenty currently has the highest Regional Economic Growth in New Zealand at 7.7 per cent, as compared with the National Average GDP growth of 4.1 per cent over 2016.

'With 43 per cent of the Bay of Plenty's GDP associated with the Port of Tauranga and 41 per cent of New Zealand's total exports (by value) flowing through Port of Tauranga, we take our role in New Zealand's Supply Chain very seriously and strive to provide an efficient trade gateway to assist the Government in achieving its goal of doubling primary industry exports by 2025,” says Mark.