A project to fix CentrePort's giant gantry cranes, which load containers on to ships, could take six months.

STANDFIRST: CentrePort's progress since the earthquake is remarkable, but, says Hamish Rutherford, questions remain as to whether it will – or even should – go back to how it was before.

All corners of the capital were shaken violently by the November 14 earthquake, but nowhere behaved quite like the land at CentrePort.

Just a few hundred metres from Wellington railway station, liquefaction pumped not only mud from the reclaimed land, but rocks larger than cricket balls.

MAARTEN HOLL/ FAIRFAX NZ The feet of CentrePort's gantry cranes. During the November 14 quake the cranes jumped off the rails, with parts of the wharf driven around 30 centimetres higher and a metre towards the sea.

Anthony Delaney, an engineer hired by CentrePort just days after the quake as its head of infrastructure, says experts who visited the site told him that type of liquefaction had not been seen since the devastating Kobe earthquake in Japan in 1995.

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"The forces and the hydraulic pressure here was enormous," Delaney said during a tour of the site.

KEVIN STENT/FAIRFAX NZ Staff inspect damage at CentrePort in the days after the November 14 earthquake.

In places, the ground near the wharf dropped about 40cm (and is settling slightly even now), destroying a network of underground services.

The plunge in the asphalt was exaggerated by the rise in the adjacent wharf, driven about 30cm higher, as it was pushed around a metre towards the sea.

CentrePort's two giant gantry cranes, which weigh close to 800 tonnes each, jumped off the rails they sit on.

ROSS GIBLIN/ FAIRFAX NZ CentrePort chief executive Derek Nind with the Pacific Aria on November 21. It was the first cruise ship to visit Wellington after that month's earthquake. Despite disruption elsewhere, cruise ships have been visiting the port virtually as normal.

While in the first days after the earthquake the public focus centred on its commercial property, especially the partial collapse of a floor in Statistics House, the company was faced with what appeared to be an existential threat.

Even sorting the crumpled piles of containers was a multi-step challenge, amid the threat that the cranes could collapse into a sinkhole.

First, sonar sounding was used to check the path, discovering one cavern twice the size of a ute. The voids needed to be filled before cranes on tracks – used to spread weight over a larger area – eased towards the containers.

ROSS GIBLIN/FAIRFAX NZ At least one floor in Statistics House, built in 2005 and designed to withstand major earthquakes, partly collapsed in the November quake. Its future is under a cloud.

"It's a bit like the story of the lady who swallowed the spider to catch the fly," CentrePort chief executive Derek Nind joked, of the series of steps it took to achieve what would normally be a straightforward task.

Righting the containers, as well as engineering a plinth-like structure to prevent the gantry cranes from the risk of collapse, came during weeks when the capital was routinely being buffeted by 50 knot winds, delaying work further.

In the days following, Chris Laidlaw, the chairman of Greater Wellington Regional Council – CentrePort's majority owner – issued an alarming warning. Central government may be called on to bail out the company.

MAARTEN HOLL/ FAIRFAX NZ In the days after the November earthquake, BNZ said it expected to be back in its Harbour Quays building within days. However, the building stands empty, awaiting the outcome of a government inquiry into the performance of CentrePort's commercial buildings.

'Most things are kind of working'

Four months on CentrePort is a scene of sharp contrasts.

At the northern end of the wharf, cruise ship passengers politely queue on the wharf, waiting for buses to ferry them into the city.

Metres away, the building previously used as a terminal for the passengers is, in Nind's words, "munted". The building's future "is in the hands of insurers".

But at that end of the wharf, the ground sank only a few centimetres, meaning it was back in operation almost immediately.

Out in the harbour stream, another ship sits motionless, waiting. Here to collect logs, damage to its normal berth means the ship will berth where a cruise ship is situated.

Contractors work extra shifts to load the ships in between cruise visits.

Log volumes are down only slightly on what they were a year ago, while cruise passengers – a function of a growing industry – are up on last year. The numbers of cars being brought through the port are also higher.

Further south the damage is much more severe. The southern seawall has been eroded by more than the width of a two-lane road, eaten by the constant harbour swell.

Concrete blocks are dropped around the edge to arrest the decay, but the fix would not stand up to another big shake.

The major activity is next to the giant cranes, as staff undertake a project designed to get the container lifters back up and running, partially at least.

Huge iron beams shaped are constructed on site over many hours, then painstakingly lifted into place, before being driven 24 metres into the ground in just three minutes.

Elsewhere tubes are lowered to direct stones to be pumped into the ground deep below, in an attempt to strengthen the land near the wharf.

Other massive beams will act as cantilevers. All up, getting the cranes back in action could take six months.

Although some small container vessels with their own cranes have already started servicing Wellington, volumes are "about 10 per cent" of what they were last October, Nind says.

"If you look around the port, you've almost got most things kind of working, slightly modified, it might cost a little bit more to do," although insurance picks up the difference.

"[The container wharf] is not going, so our focus is there, we've got to get that going."

CentrePort has three years of business interruption insurance, giving it a deadline of when it needs to be as close to normal as possible.

"Our focus is broader than that," Nind says in a makeshift meeting room, one of several container-like buildings dotted around CentrePort's headquarters.

"Our focus is on the exporters and importers of central New Zealand. We've got to try and get that going as well."

As much as Nind says his focus is on supporting the region's exporters, the company is in an uncertain race to secure its future as a substantial container port.

CentrePort grew container volumes by 23 per cent in 2015/16 and before the earthquake was on track for more, albeit smaller, growth.

A chunk of that came at the expense of Taranaki and Napier, where much of the volume is likely to have returned now.

For years infrastructure experts have called for a rationalisation of New Zealand's port operations, and there is no guarantee that CentrePort would benefit if that ever took place.

"There is a commercial risk in it, there's no debate about that," Nind says. He quickly quotes a 2014 Ministry of Transport study which claimed transport costs for some exporters would double if CentrePort was reduced to a regional port, without direct international services.

Those added costs can see the port return, Nind says. "We know [that] and we hear [that] from our exporter and importer community. For some of them there are some really significantly increasing costs [from CentrePort's incapacity]. So we believe that we do have a key role because of our centrality.

"That will allow us to come back."

Even once the cranes are restored, Nind admits the port company faces a "chicken and egg" scenario. "You've got to convince them [the shipping lines] that the cargo will be here in the right volume," he says. "[But] you can't get the cargo if you don't have a ship."

'We're well insured'﻿

Nind fends off almost all questions about the port's insurance, beyond repeatedly saying it is "well insured". Asked about Laidlaw's bailout comments, he says the company is "comfortable" with its situation.

The insurance is replacement cover, meaning the company needs to rebuild what it has if the policies are to pay out.

With CentrePort owning premium space near Wellington's central business district, there have long been calls for the operations to be reformed.

Nind refuses to discuss the possibility that CentrePort could entertain a negotiated settlement with its insurers, to allow it to look at different operations.

The port was "hardly overly endowed" with space.

"We believe our assets are well insured and we're working with our insurers to make that happen."

He has even less to say about the future of its commercial buildings, insisting he does not know what it holds.

CentrePort has confirmed at least four of its smaller, older buildings will come down, although all were likely to have been demolished irrespective of the earthquake (the New Zealand Rugby Union moved away from the port in 2012 when CentrePort confirmed it had no plans to strengthen its headquarters).

But as for the BNZ building – which was also closed for months after the 2013 earthquake – and Statistics House, two major modern office buildings, Nind says he is in the dark.

"I haven't seen a final [engineering assessment], I haven't even seen a draft assessment."

The performance of the buildings in the earthquake sparked a government inquiry, which was meant to report in February. Now the timing is unclear, and Nind says he does not know the outcome.

"I genuinely do not know whether they can be repaired or not.

"That's partly a conversation we've got to have with our insurers, and their engineers, and as you can imagine, there might be some differences of opinion."

Does Wellington need a large commercial port?﻿

The fact that CentrePort's insurance policy is for the replacement of the port's assets does not answer the question of whether it should be rebuilt as it was.

CentrePort's land is likely to be a significant focus of the Let's Get Wellington Moving initiative, a potentially wide-ranging review of the capital's transport network.

There are already very public calls for the port to be reformed, with Wellington property developer Ian Cassels saying the land should be repurposed, opening more of the waterfront to the public.

The idea of simply rebuilding the port as it was given the possibility of a payout would be wasteful.

"To say you just rebuild it as it is is the most appalling grovelling to conservatism," Cassels says.

"You just don't do that. It suggests what was there was perfect, when clearly it wasn't."

Cassels says the nature of insurance negotiations means Nind is right to toe the line that the port was planning a uniform replacement.

Insurance policies, especially on damaged buildings, tended to create a "dance of hypocrisy" where building owners would earnestly insist their plan was to replace the buildings, right up to the point the insurers pay out.

"They can never advertise beforehand that they're thinking of doing something different," he says.

The office buildings developed by CentrePort should be torn down if at all possible.

"There's no question the best result for them is to take the full amount of money they can negotiate and then do something differently, because there's no office tenant in town of any repute that's going to go back down to that land."

Cassels is also questioning whether Wellington needs a substantial container port, especially close to the CBD.

"We're a city of ideas and inventiveness," he says. "That sort of stuff doesn't generally need 20 foot containers."

Not everyone everyone agrees, including one party which is a major stakeholder.

Horizons, the regional council for e Manawatu and Whanganui, holds 23 per cent of the port company's shares, making the future of CentrePort more complicated than simply a Wellington issue.

Bruce Gordon, chairman of Horizons since 2011, wants the port operations to be returned to what they were. As well as a commercial investment, CentrePort had strategic importance for Horizons.

"Probably the majority of the product that goes through that port comes from our region."

At the very least, Wellington should not expect the port company to be doing it favours when it comes to land.

Previously Horizons resisted discussions driven by Greater Wellington Regional Council for more of CentrePort's land to be turned into parks, as it was not a core function of the port.

"As a shareholder we don't have a lot of interest in providing amenities [or] green space for Wellington," Gordon says.

"[Greater Wellington Regional] council does, but that's not part of the core business of the port."

The same was likely to apply for transport or entertainment uses. Gordon says if Wellington wants to use CentrePort's land, it should be prepared to pay for it.

"So far we haven't had an argument, but we have had that discussion. They certainly understand our point of view."