The Minister of Transport will be in Ashburton to officially open the Fairfield Freight Hub next week.

Minister Simeon Brown will be on site for the opening of the $18m freight hub project on Friday.

The hub is a tri-party commercial development led by the Wareing Group (which wholly owns Fairfield Freight Hub Ltd) with KiwiRail and the Ashburton District Council.

The council contributed $2.3m from its Three Waters Reform Better Off funding package, and the Government chipped in with $2.5m from NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi’s upgrade programme.

The hub will consolidate freight at one central location and open up direct access to the ports, taking trucks off the state highway– as well as shifting the rail yards out of Ashburton’s town centre.

Operations started at Fairfield this week.

KiwiRail general manager future state freight Mark Heissenbuttel said that for about seven months locomotives will have to shunt wagons across the Fairfield Road level crossing, as part of daily work putting together freight trains for the hub.

“KiwiRail is redesigning how the signals in the area work, which will resolve the issue, but it is expected to take until October for the new system to be operational.”

Ashburton Mayor Brown said the shunting yard in the middle of town has held up traffic for decades as wagons are connected or disconnected, but those days are over.

The other aspect of that change is that without trains slowing down for shunting in town they will all be passing through at greater speed, up to 80kph.

“People walking across the railway lines in town will need to have their wits about them though as trains will be passing through Ashburton at a much faster speed,” he said.

Before opening the freight hub, Minister Brown will be in the centre of Ashburton to officially open Rangitata MP James Meager’s electorate office on Burnett Street.

By Jonathan Leask