Containers are steadily flowing through the country’s newest inland freight hub, which even before its official opening in April was handling traffic, having been completed several months ahead of schedule and close to its 20 million dollar budget.

The Fairfield facility is four hectares in size, and adjoins the 120Ha Ashburton Business Park, off SH1 to the north of the mid-Canterbury town. The site has storage capacity for 800 TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units), offers 120 reefer plug-in sites, and can handle 60 containers per day, equivalent to an annual throughput of 20,000 TEUs.

In turn, that can be boosted by greater train movements, which are likely to follow the scheduled delivery of new locomotives and wagons to KiwiRail at the end of this year.

The project is managed by the Wareing Group, whose subsidiary Wilson Bulk Transport handles much of the container freight emanating from the region. Group director Mark Wareing says seeing a long-held dream fulfilled has been very satisfying: “I guess for us it has been quite a long time coming, for it was in August 2019 that we reached out to KiwiRail about the need for expanded siding facilities in Ashburton.

“The incumbent freight company that was operating the existing siding on West Street on behalf of KiwiRail had found the volume was not high enough to justify continuing with the agreement and wanted to pull out.

“Eventually, early in 2021, we took it over. Its capacity was very small, limited to 12 wagons per day or around 6000 TEUs per year. From a general freight prospective, the siding wasn’t viable, but our interest was more towards the provision of an alternative to trucking export containers to South Island ports – primarily Lyttelton, but Timaru and Port Chalmers as well.

“We have a long association with upwards of a dozen exporters from the mid-Canterbury region, and the volume that they could provide was vastly in excess of what the existing facility could handle.

“Around that time the transport manager for Talley’s mentioned that his company was looking at setting up an export hub itself and had bought the old Silver Fern Farms plant at Fairton, close to the Ashburton business park.

“This had an existing rail siding, but when that was inspected by KiwiRail was found to be not fit for purpose. This prompted a decision to look at setting up a purpose-built facility. We canvassed several parties, including local and central government, for funding support, achieved that, and went through the design and consenting processes. These were completed early last year, and construction started in the first week of May.

“The initial timeline was for the facility not to be open until October this year, so to have everything completed and up and running inside 12 months was remarkable, and a credit to the major contractors, Tarbottom Land & Civil and Fulton Hogan.

“Talley’s has made a long-term commitment to send its export produce through the hub, and several other exporters we work for are equally as committed. Basically, they don’t mind what mode of transport we use, as long as their goods get to the port in time.”

KiwiRail chief executive Peter Reidy says the hub is great news for KiwiRail and the Ashburton area: “Mid-Canterbury is a base for moving significant container volumes to South Island ports and around New Zealand, whether it’s grain, seed, horticultural produce or meat.

“However, our existing container terminal in central Ashburton was too small to meet today’s freight demand. By moving  operations to Fairfield, we will increase the amount of local freight carried by rail from 6000 containers to 20,000 containers a year – that’s half a million tonnes of freight off the region’s roads.

“Inter-modal facilities like the Fairfield freight hub make use of both road and rail transport – enabling trucks to complete the first and last mile of collection and delivery, and for rail to do the heavy longer-distance movements. It highlights how road and rail can work efficiently together to deliver wider benefits for the community.”