KiwiRail has been fined $375,000 over the 2024 grounding of the Interislander ferry Aratere in Picton Harbour, with Maritime NZ pointing to a clear knowledge gap on a newly modified steering console

KiwiRail has been fined $375,000 over the 2024 grounding of the Interislander ferry Aratere in Picton Harbour, with Maritime New Zealand pointing to a clear knowledge gap in the bridge crew’s training on a recently modified steering console.

The state-owned rail and ferry operator was sentenced in the Wellington District Court on 4 May after pleading guilty to charges under sections 36 and 48 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015. Alongside the fine, the judge ordered KiwiRail to pay $25,000 in costs.

The Aratere ran aground at Titoki Bay, just outside Picton, on the evening of 21 June 2024. The ferry was on a freight sailing from Picton to Wellington with 39 crew members and eight passengers on board. It was refloated the following evening, with no oil spills and no breaches to the hull, but the incident triggered a long Maritime NZ investigation that has now ended in court.

Maritime NZ Director Kirstie Hewlett said the case turned on a basic problem of unfamiliarity with critical equipment. “Steering systems are safety-critical. The crew must have a clear understanding of how the systems work and how to override any automatic commands,” she said.

The steering console on the bridge had been modified before the sailing, and the crew on duty did not fully understand the new layout when the ferry began veering off course. “In this case, there was a clear knowledge gap about how the newly installed steering console worked, including in an emergency,” Hewlett said. RNZ has reported the moment of grounding turned on a short autopilot sequence that the crew were unable to override before the ferry hit the shore.

The investigation found failures across several layers of KiwiRail’s organisation. According to Maritime NZ’s case summary, those failures included change-management processes, training and familiarisation procedures, documentation, control of critical steering functions, and bridge resource management. In other words, the regulator concluded that KiwiRail had altered a piece of safety-critical equipment without making sure that the people responsible for using it knew how it worked.

Hewlett said the verdict carried a wider message for operators across the maritime industry. “This event sends a clear message to operators to ensure Masters and crews are properly trained and provided sufficient time and opportunity to familiarise themselves when introducing safety critical equipment, so that they can correctly undertake all safety critical actions on the vessel,” she said.

The Aratere is one of three ferries operating across Cook Strait, and is the workhorse of the Interislander rail-enabled fleet. Built in 1998 and lengthened in 2011, it carries both passengers and rail freight wagons between the North and South Islands. After the grounding it was inspected, repaired and returned to service, where it continues to run alongside the Kaitaki and Kaiarahi.

The sentence comes during a busy period for ferry-related news. Earlier this week Newswire reported that Interislander had almost doubled its fuel surcharge on Cook Strait freight, with cost flow-through to supermarket shelves expected within weeks. The current fuel pressure has nothing to do with the 2024 grounding, but it sits alongside it as part of a wider picture of strain on New Zealand’s only sea bridge between the two main islands.

KiwiRail has previously been fined for safety failings on the rail side of its operation. In 2023 it was ordered to pay $350,000 after a crew member was crushed between rail wagons in a yard incident, also under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015. The Aratere fine continues a pattern of regulator action when training and procedure shortcomings sit behind serious incidents.

For travellers, the practical takeaway is that the Aratere remains in service and the regulator has now closed its enforcement loop on the 2024 grounding. The harder question is whether the underlying lesson, that crews need real understanding of any new equipment before it goes into service, has been absorbed across the rest of the fleet, especially with new ferries due to enter the Cook Strait fleet over the coming years to replace the existing trio.

The court did not order any individual sanctions, only the corporate fine and costs. KiwiRail had not issued a public response to the sentence at the time of publication.

Were you on board the Aratere in June 2024, or do you have memories of the grounding from the Picton waterfront? Share your story in the comments below.