December 2025 articles

The CILT Annual Forum, held after the Awards Dinner in Wellington, brought together industry leaders, analysts, and policymakers to examine how transport and logistics can “make it happen” in the decade ahead. Sponsored by MITO and hosted at the Ministry of Transport, the afternoon moved with the steady rhythm of a sector taking stock, linking workforce development, infrastructure planning, and supply chain productivity into a single conversation about capability and readiness.

The 2025 CILT Annual Forum and Awards Dinner brought New Zealand’s transport and logistics community together, this year in Wellington, to recognise the people and organisations lifting performance across the sector.

This article sets out KiwiRail’s thinking on decarbonisation, which concluded that battery electric locomotives were the right choice for the future. Building on that, KiwiRail have developed outline plans for moving to electric propulsion for the Auckland-Hamilton-Tauranga lines (the “Golden Triangle”).

This article summarises an internal KiwiRail study recommending electrification based on a mix of extending overhead line electrification (“OLE”) and battery electric locomotives as the preferred path to decarbonising the KiwiRail mainline locomotive fleet by 2050. The article focuses on the technical rather than the business aspects of the issue.

New Zealand’s freight system is under mounting pressure. Demand is rising, weather events are worsening, costs are volatile, and operators are navigating regulatory settings that have not kept pace with the country’s freight task. The NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA)’s Action Plan for Freight 2024–27 sets out to address these structural issues by tightening its weakest bolts – not by reinventing the system.

For a nation at the far edge of global trade routes, air connectivity is critical to New Zealand’s economy. Every day, aviation carries high-value exports to key markets and brings tourists, students, and investors back home. That same connectivity is heavily reliant on fossil fuel, however. Aviation is responsible for roughly 2 to 3 per cent of global carbon emissions, and one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise.

On 5 April 2025, New Zealand’s aviation regulatory landscape underwent its most significant transformation in over three decades. The Civil Aviation Act 2023 (the 2023 Act) replaced the Civil Aviation Act 1990 (the 1990 Act), streamlining outdated legislation while expanding regulatory tools to address the realities of 21st-century aviation, from drone regulation and airport master planning to climate change and safety-sensitive operations.

DHL Supply Chain’s (DHL) newest Life Sciences and Healthcare (LSHC) facility in Auckland arrives at a time when demand for compliant, resilient health logistics continues to climb. Rising volumes of biologics, stricter cold-chain requirements, and lessons from recent supply disruptions have sharpened expectations across the sector. The new Te Kapua Drive facility responds directly to those pressures, adding significant capacity while introducing technology and design features that signal where the industry is heading.