The Northland Harbour Board first proposed a container port at Marsden Point in the 1960s, at which time Whangarei was served by Port Whangarei, in the upper harbour near the city. The Northland Port Corporation was formed in 1988 to take over the commercial port assets of the Northland Harbour Board, and it entered a joint venture with Port of Tauranga Ltd in 2000 to establish Northport Ltd. Construction of the port at Marsden Point started in October 2000 and the first berth opened in June 2002, with a second berth to open two months later. Port Whangarei closed to commercial shipping in April 2007 when the remaining cargo operations were transferred to Marsden Point. A third berth opened there in October 2007. Northland Port Corporation changed its name to Marsden Maritime Holdings Ltd in August 2014.
Operations
The terminal's multi-purpose facility caters for a wide range of cargoes and their associated vessel types, including logs, woodchip, veneer, coal, kiwifruit, cement and fertiliser. In 2015, Northport added a mobile container crane. There is also scope to host cruise ship calls. Currently operating on 48 hectares with 570 linear metres of berth, there is extensive storage capacity within the port's existing footprint, which is backed by over 180 hectares of port and commercial zoned land. Northport has the capability to expand to 70 hectares and up to 1,400 linear metres of berth. In the financial year ending 30 June 2016, there were 259 ship calls and the port handled some 3.4 million revenue tonnes of cargo. The port and ancillary operations support close to 300 employment positions. Northport's marine service provider, North Tugz, currently handles some of the largest ships entering New Zealand waters, for the Marsden Point Oil Refinery. Northport Ltd is the port operating company of the port facilities. In October 2017, the new Labour–New Zealand First coalition government announced that it would spend $600 million on rehabilitating the North Auckland Line and building the Marsden Point Branch, the long proposed rail extension to Northport, at a cost of $200 million, the total works to cost $800 million; and are to carry out a feasibility study on moving the Ports of Auckland to Northport. Winston Peters and New Zealand First also envisaged that the area around the port could be a tax-free Special Economic Area.
