Despite further damage to Lyttelton Port of Christchurch's wharves from Tuesday's quakes, the company was hoping to have its coal and container wharves operational by tomorrow.
Port Otago chief executive Geoff Plunket said while the number of shipping containers available for use had been "tight" during the peak exporting season, there had been no disruption to services in recent months.
"Lyttelton has sustained more damage, which is going to be tough for them.
"We have offered our support ... but we are too far south and container vessels will likely go to Timaru, as they did after the February earthquake," Mr Plunket said.
Following the February quake, Lyttelton had written off $22.6 million in assets and its repair programme would be disrupted by the latest quakes, but no damage estimates have been released yet.
Mr Plunket predicted Lyttelton would have to finish an engineering assessment and make an announcement in coming weeks about cargo capacity, and in turn shipping lines would then consider whether or not to alter their respective schedules.
South Island sales manager for container hiring company Royal Wolf, Rick Mills, told the New Zealand Herald that following the economic downturn there had been a worldwide shortage of containers.
The shipping companies stopped buying new containers leading to the closure of Chinese factories that made them.
Although the factories were running again, they were not back to full capacity.
Lack of shelf space in damaged Canterbury warehouses has had a knock-on effect, with warehouses further north running out of room for new stock, forcing them to hire containers for extra storage space.
Christchurch company YS Containers has more than 200 containers leased out and owner, Noel Thomas, said demand was unprecedented.
"Our Auckland supplier said if he had 1000 containers by Monday he'd be rid of them all by Friday," he said.
Mr Thomas has a waiting list of about 40 people wanting to buy containers and he said in some cases insurance companies were paying for the purchase because it was more economical than hiring containers for the two to three years it was going to take to rebuild houses.
Safe Store has 1450 units in Christchurch spread over five sites and manager Fiona Paskell said the 60 units empty at the time of the February quake quickly filled up.
"They went within a week or two, and now we are full with about 20 to 30 people on the waiting list," she said.
