Lyttelton Port of Christchurch marks five years of operation and customer service improvements using SPARCS N4 Navis, a part of Cargotec Corporation and the global technology standard for managing the movement of cargo through terminals, today announced Lyttelton Port of Christchurch (LPC) marked its five-year anniversary operating the Navis SPARCS N4 terminal operating system (TOS). The efficiency and capabilities of SPARCS N4 has allowed LPC to increase their container volume over the past five years by 40 percent while increasing productivity by 9 percent.

LPC deployed SPARCS N4 in April 2006, replacing its 11-year old legacy system and making history as the first marine terminal to implement the system. The change was made in order to support the port’s strategic direction of delivering fast, efficient turnaround to customers and to achieve its long-term container volume targets. With an expected 2011 volume of 272,700 TEUs, LPC has significantly increased productivity and density of land use while constraining costs.

“We invested in SPARCS N4 because it is the most advanced system for managing terminal operations, and we have certainly reaped the benefits since deploying the system in 2006,” said Peter Davie, Chief Executive at Lyttelton Port of Christchurch. “The customization and automation capabilities, as well as the scalability of the system to operate any size terminal, has enabled LPC to provide excellent service to our customers.”

Navis SPARCS N4 is the next generation TOS, allowing customers the flexibility and scalability they need to run their operations at the lowest possible total cost of ownership (TCO). In addition to supporting volume growth, five years after deploying the system LPC is now able to manage larger volumes of transships annually, and has the added capability of transferring containers between its CityDepot and the terminal facility on a just-in-time basis. Average net crane moves also increased from 26.5 moves per hour in 2006 to 28.9 moves per hour in 2010.

“The capabilities of the SPARCS N4 software have increased since we first implemented the solution, allowing us to make additional improvements including lower costs per unit, increased visibility of data to customers, easier reporting and shorter response times for customer requests,” added Davie.

“LPC has been a leader in implementing our technology and we are proud of the voyage we have taken together since first launching SPARCS N4 in 2006,” said Bill Walsh president and CEO of Navis, LLC. “Working with LPC over the past five years has been an exciting endeavor for Navis and we are pleased to be a contributing part of the port’s growth and marked improvements. We look forward to our continued work with LPC, providing enhanced features and functionality that will help them to maximize the efficiency of their operations.”