PORT OF TAURANGA’s long struggle for approval of its significant port expansion has taken a definitive step forward with approval of its Stella Passage development.
The project has been approved under the Fast-track Approvals Act 2024, subject to conditions, and has been immediately welcomed by Port of Tauranga chief financial officer Simon Kebbell.
“The Stella Passage development is vital strategic infrastructure to support future freight growth for New Zealand. It will improve the resilience and efficiency of the international supply chain and lower costs for importers and exporters,” Mr Kebbell said.
“The development is urgently needed so it is a great relief to reach this important milestone.”
PoT and its advisors are reviewing the final decision and conditions in detail. The decision remains subject to appeal rights under the Fast-track Approvals Act, the port said.
The Stella Passage development involves extending the Sulphur Point container berth by 385 metres (in two stages) and the Mount Maunganui wharves by 315 metres, by converting existing cargo storage land within the port’s current footprint.
It also involves associated reclamation of the land behind the new wharves and dredging of the passage.
There is considerable irony in the ‘fast track approval’ of a project, aspect of which were first proposed 24 years ago. The current version has been repeatedly bogged down in red tape, environmental and resource consents legal challenges.
In mid-April last year PoT lodged an application under NZ’s Fast-track Approvals Act 2024 in an effort to overcome delays in the environmental approvals process. However, PoT in August 2025 reported that a judicial review of the port’s application for the Stella Passage development had been upheld, with the High Court determining that the Environmental Protection Authority should not have accepted the port’s application as the project was not as described in schedule 2 of the legislation.
The judge’s decision agreed that while it may have been left out by mistake, there was no discretion, and the EPA should not have accepted the application based of the current wording in the schedule of the legislation.
At the time PoT chief executive Leonard Sampson warned the port was turning away shipping lines that want to call at Tauranga, including one service that “would have provided NZ importers and exporters with an estimated NZ$65 million to $90 million per annum in international freight savings.
“The delays are preventing a much-needed boost to the NZ economy,” Mr Sampson said at the time.