The Auckland dry dock is no longer fit for purpose and the Regional Economic Development Minister and the Minister of Defence say they have now got a strong case for it to be moved north.
“We have allocated a couple of million dollars to initiate the relocation of part of the navel base out of Devonport to the north,” Shane Jones said today.
With the dry dock at the Devonport naval base now being too small for many modern ships and with the naval fleet growing, the Government is considering other options.
“The report shows that the north is an ideal site for the dry dock facility – Auckland’s congested and not only do we want the Auckland ports to move north we want the naval base to look north too,” said Mr Jones.
Speaking to Northland business leaders at Ruakaka, Mr Jones says a new multi-million-dollar dry dock could be a win-win for the region.
“Commerce wants it, the military wants it and there’s enormous amount of business on both sides of the Tasman that could very well turn it into a commercial success,” he added.
Chairman of the Ruakaka Economic Development group Peter Batten says the north has been neglected long enough.
“This is what we’ve been wanting for a long time the employment rate the housing rate everything up here is you know so far behind. We’ve been neglected for far too long.”
A larger facility would mean ships including the Interislander ferries could be serviced in New Zealand rather than sent to Australia or Asia.
“It will benefit all of New Zealand,” says Wayne Brown from Upper North island Supply Chains Strategy Group.
“But it will benefit locally in Whangarei.”
KiwiRail says a new dry dock and the presence of the navy will require much better roading infrastructure, but the Government is yet to approve plans to build a direct rail line here to Marsden Point.
The report on the dry dock will be handed to cabinet next week.
So when you see pictures like above and people see why there is heaps of room for the frigate and navy vessels... Well the problem while this is somewhat true, ships like HMNZS Canterbury can not fit the Calliope Dry Dock. The new tanker HMNZS Aotearoa most definitely can not fit, and if the DCP 2019 is kept on path I would add the enhanced sealift vessel will most likely be too big as well.
The dry dock at Devonport Naval Base also does civilian commercial vessels as well but limited to the smaller end of the range of vessels that could use the facilities if they were available in New Zealand. As stated in the article the Interislander ferries could be serviced here in NZ instead of going overseas to get it done. The only other dry dock is at Lyttelton which is even smaller.
So why don't they just make Calliope bigger?
There simply is not the room to expand Calliope to the size that is needed to fit a vessel like Aotearoa in. But even if we could at a squeeze expand Calliope so it could fit a vessel like Aotearoa, if you are going to do a project like this you need to future proof your self so in reality, the dry dock needs to be bigger and be able to handle vessels much larger than the navy's current largest vessel (HMNZS Aotearoa) and there is no room at Calliope for that.
The dry dock was completed in 1888 so it is 131 years old (at the time of this article) It has had a few systems upgrades over the years from new gates to new pumps etc. Calliope will still have its use for small to medium-sized vessels.
