Port Otago chief executive Kevin Winders said a solution had been found for the booms of Maersk's Rio-class vessels.
The ships created many complaints from residents, who were disturbed by their heavy low-frequency sounds.
The international shipping company had now bought 5m by 1.8m silencers for the six ships of that class which enter the port.
They would be installed in Malaysia over the next few months.
The solution took a while because it was not a simple fix, Mr Winders said.
"It's not like a Toyota Corolla where you can just go to Repco and bang it in.
"It's great that the solution has gone from a theory to physical parts being shipped down to Malaysia."
They would first be installed on the Rio de la Plata, which would be back in Dunedin around Christmas.
The silencers are fitted to the auxiliary engines of each vessel and change the frequency of their noises, making them sound more like a standard container ship.
Both the port's scientists and those at Maersk said the devices were the best solution.
"The science says it's going to work, but when the first one comes in they will be out there testing it."
As an interim step the port and the logistics company agreed to move the ships' arrival and departure times to be in port only one weeknight, rather than two nights over the weekend.
Mr Winders said he did not know what the silencers would cost, but they were paid for by Maersk.
"It's great that the world's largest shipping line has listened, values the importance of our social licence and is now making a significant investment to solve the problem."
Staff saved from screeching by software
Dunedin's port has teamed with Microsoft so skilled staff do not waste time listening to audio of screeching possums.
When Port Otago's business intelligence lead Sofia Ng was recruited last year, staff had to manually listen to audio recordings every time its noise monitoring devices registered sounds close to exceedance levels.
"They'd have to go back and figure out was it a train, was it a dog barking, a possum screeching in the cemetery.
"It's time-consuming and not very pleasant. Listening to screeching possums is not fun times."
She and chief information officer Dylan Lee developed the idea of teaching computers to categorise the noises, based on a New York City study analysing street noises.
They approached Microsoft to develop a solution.
"They were on board pretty quickly. They also wanted to do something practical."
With Microsoft, through Hamilton artificial intelligence firm Aware Group, they created the software, which has now been used for six months at the port.
They believed it was 95% accurate, but this was being independently audited.
This month, the project won the Azure Innovate Award at the Microsoft New Zealand Partner Awards.
The software meant that the port could redirect where it put its resources.
"They are highly skilled people that used to end up listening to audio tracks of possums. They can go and actually work on what we can do to reduce those noises."
Mr Lee said there was interest in the "niche" New Zealand sound-monitoring community regarding the software.
He did not believe other ports in the country had advanced such technology as far as it had.
