STALLED LYTTLETON PORT INSURANCE CLAIM COULD REACH AUSTRALASIAN RECORD

Documents obtained from Christchurch City Holdings (CCHL), a company owned by local ratepayers, indicate that insurance claims for the repair of Lyttleton Port of Christchurch (LPC) could be "the largest ever in Australasian history", reports stuff.co.nz. CCHL is a 79.5% stakeholder in the port, with Port of Otago owning 15.48%. The smaller shareholder has asked at LPC annual meetings for better estimates of the repair cost, alleging that there is a potential insurance shortfall. In a response supplied to the press under the Official Information Act, CCHL chief executive Bob Lineham said that "insurance is of course a major issue for LPC" and that "there are indications that getting future cover may be problematic". He also noted that LPC's claim was potentially the largest ever seen in Australasia, while revealing that LPC was in discussions with insurers on a draft reinstatement plan for the harbour structure project, with construction planned to start this year. Mr Lineham said that CCHL did not have confidential information on LPC, despite being a near 80% stakeholder, because LPC was a listed company and therefore had to be careful that information supplied to a single shareholder had to be publicly available. He added that he was satisfied with the way LPC was handling the situation. However, Port of Otago is not and has asked searching questions on the state of the insurance claim. Last July LPC reported that it had received NZD35.7m ($30.0m), but payments were halted from May 2011 on by Suncorp subsidiary Vero, NZI and QBE as a result of a dispute on whether temporary repair projects were turning into permanent repairs ( IIN 24, November 7 2012). LPC chairman Rodger Fisher, who is to step down as chairman on June 30 after a decade in the role, despite a request from CCHL for him to stay, admitted that he would have liked it if the insurance process had moved faster than it had, but called it "a process situation". Last November he said that the total cost of the damage had been put at NZD500m, and that "the reinstatement of key harbour structures will take a number of years to complete".