National Freight Demands Study - Ministry of Transport

National Freight Demands Study
facilitators of the movement of the goods.
Copies of the questionnaire and covering letter for the first group, owners of the goods
are set out in Appendix B.
Formal interviews were undertaken with a wide range of organisations with interests in
the freight sector. In total over 100 formal interviews were conducted and these were
supported and supplemented by short telephone conversations with a large number of
other firms and individuals.
2.3 Information from published and unpublished statistics
The results of the surveys were supplemented by the collection of published and
unpublished data, particularly on the total outputs for individual commodities, derived
either from the appropriate agencies directly or from other information sources
particularly on the Internet. The type of data which was available varied widely from
detailed statistical information to more qualitative data about the general patterns of
operation of key industries.
Examples of sources of data of this type include:
Statistics NZ for a wide range of data
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
Crown Minerals Mining Production Statistics
New Zealand Forest Owners Association (NZFOA)
New Zealand Timber Industries Federation
Meat and Wool Economic Service
Livestock Information Council (LIC) (for dairy statistics)
New Zealand Horticulture
Transit New Zealand for road traffic and heavy vehicle flows
Land Transport New Zealand for Road User Charge (RUC) data
port companies for details of their movements.
In other instances, specific companies that control a large part of the market often
provide detailed information about their activities. An example of this is material on the
movement of coal produced by Solid Energy. The information on the Solid Energy
website identifies the source of production, the volume produced at that location, the
main market and the main method or methods of transportation. What this information
does not include is the pattern of distribution of the more minor flows which in some
instances may amount to a substantial total and the published data was therefore
supplemented by the results of the survey. Other information was gained from company
reports and other material on company websites.
Where information on the total volumes produced or consumed was not available for
particular commodities, we developed estimates using other sources for the key sectors,
including where appropriate measures such as consumption per person and consumption
per employee or conversion factors between weight and volume where only information
on the value of output or sales existed. This approach was used particularly for retail
sales, both for food and other retailing.
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