Two new container cranes, the last pieces of the Port of Tauranga's $350 million port upgrade, are entering operation on the Sulphur Point container terminal over coming weeks.

The cranes are being ‘walked' into their final position on the track along the wharf over the next week, says Port of Tauranga CEO Mark Cairns.

The first one was brought up to position on the cranes' rails on Wednesday, the second will be on Monday.

'Then commissioning is likely to change just a little bit depending on shipping and weather,” says Mark. 'We will commission one on the 30th and commission the other on December 6.”

The two cranes were delivered along with 13 additional straddle carriers, and are being commissioned following the dismantling of Crane 1, at 38 years the oldest Liebherr crane in operation in the world.

The two new super post panamax cranes have an outreach of 53 metres, long enough to reach right across the deck of the bigger ships like the 43m wide Aotea Maersk which was the first of the big ships to call on October 4.

The two new arrivals give the Sulphur Point terminal eight cranes servicing three berths.

The new super post-panamax cranes will allow the port to continue to improve on the world class levels of productivity through the terminal, says Mark.

Thanks to a major dredging programme deepening shipping channels at low tide to 14.5 metres deep inside the harbour and 15.8 metres outside the harbor, the Port of Tauranga is now the only port in the country deep enough to take sups the size of the Aotea Maersk.

'There's not much point in expanding our capacity in the harbour without ensuring that we match our landside operations to be able to cope with much larger transfers of cargo, required when servicing larger ships,” says Mark speaking to the port company's annual meeting last month.

'We have increased capacity to more than 5,000 container ground slots at the container terminal, with refrigerated container connections now numbering more than 1800.”

As well as dismantling the old crane, the port company is demolishing Shed 12 at the Northern end of the Terminal and reconfiguring the layout to add a further 650 ground slots for containers and to provide its long term partner Oji Fibre Solutions with a new enhanced 22,000m purpose-built facility, at the southern end of Sulphur Point.

The expansion project has taken ten years and includes alliances onshore to provide and deliver the freight volumes that make the bigger ship visits cost effective.