It is a scene that is not seen here very often, but last Saturday two record breakers, Millennium on its third visit and newcomer Albany Pioneer, were berthed opposite each other at Port Chalmers.
With an overall length of 294m, Millennium is now the port's longest visitor.
At 47,928gt Albany Pioneer is the largest woodchip carrier to have berthed here.
And looking ahead to next year there will be another case of record holders in port on the same day.
On January 13, Millennium (90,228gt) will share the berthage facilities with Diamond Princess, which together with sister ship Sapphire Princess, are the port's largest visitors at 115,875gt.
In becoming the largest vessel of its type to call here, Albany Pioneer snatched the record from the 41,484gt, 10-year-old Forest Princess which berthed this year on May 5.
In turn, this vessel eclipsed the record established on December 7,1986, by the 40,471gt Hachinohe Maru.
This 229m-long vessel is still the longest chip ship to have berthed here.
Albany Pioneer is a 15-knot vessel having an overall length of 209.99m, a breadth of 37m and a loaded draught of 10.718m.
The 53,526dwt ship's six holds have a grain capacity of 120,860cu m.
During its stay here cargo was loaded into Nos 1, 3, and 5 holds. The other three holds will be loaded when the ship calls at Napier.
Laid down on December 30, 2004, Albany Pioneer was launched on December 13, 2006, and handed over on April 11, 2007.
The vessel was built at Kurashiki by the Mizushima yard of the Sanoyas Hishino Meisho Corporation.
Registered at Manila to the ownership of Cygnet Bulk Carriers, the vessel is currently on charter to Mitsui-OSK Lines.
It arrived last Thursday evening to occupy the berth vacated by the Inchon-bound, Vanuatu flag log ship Ken Goh.
This vessel had previously called here to discharge cement at Dunedin in April 2004.
The ship is a unit of the Inui Steam Ship Company fleet, which itself is part of the M-OSK group.
In service since June 2001, the 19,707gt Ken Goh is the largest of seven local Inui visitors built by Saiki Heavy Industries. The global financial crisis is certainly taking its toll on all sectors of the shipping industry. One recent report estimates that the number of anchored container ships is about 115, of which 70 are vessels usually available for the charter market.
The combined container capacity of these ships is about 270,000 TEU.
In recent weeks, older container ships in the 2000-3000 TEU size bracket, plus some larger units have been heading for the scrap heap.
And while vessels sold for demolition were fetching more than $US700 per tonne light displacement not so many weeks ago, they are now realising about a third of this rate.
Shipbuilding is also reported to be taking a severe hammering.
More than half of next year's drybulk orderbook is now reported to have been cancelled.
Of the 335 confirmed cancellations totalling 36 million dwt, 250 are said to be bulk carriers.
