Another excellent year for PIANC AU-NZ!
In 2025 almost fifteen hundred attendees enjoyed our member-focused events organised by our amazing regional chapters in 2025 – 33 events in 14 cities! These included technical webinars/ seminars, Young Professional leadership breakfasts, outreach visits to Australian universities, site tours of ports and other places of maritime interest, a two-day regionally focused symposium (Tasmania), industry networking and other events.
A further five hundred came to our major co-hosted conference in 2025, the biennial Australasian Coasts & Ports Conference, ‘Navigating the future – Climate Ready Coasts & Ports’ held in Adelaide from 18 – 21 August. With 508 registrations from around the region, and 173 papers presented, this was the most successful Coasts&Ports ever. This brief video highlights captures a little of the essence of the Conference – optimistic, sharing and exciting. Congratulations to presenters and award winners.
PIANC AU-NZ also held a successful pre-Conference one-day workshop on sustainable practises and decarbonisation strategies in the ports sector. ‘From Strategy to Reality’ brought practitioners and their expert knowledge together. See our brief video here. The Board meanwhile reviewed and updated our own sustainability strategy in 2025. Thank you to Board Members Catherine Blaine and David Dack for all their work on the strategy!
Towards the end of 2025 our mentoring program led by Board Member Rhys Jones began a new cohort of partnerships, which we are confident will continue the fruitful impact for participants, which previous years have provided.
Not surprisingly with all this activity, the year saw an increase in our membership – in October we passed our first century of corporate members! The year’s end also saw an increase in our regular e-newsletter subscribers – up to 3,510 and our social media outreach with currently 3,670 LinkedIn followers.
In 2025 fifty PIANC AU-NZ members continued to participate in over thirty PIANC International Working Groups (WGs), with several of our regional experts chairing or co-chairing, and mentoring their WGs. In 2025 PIANC AU-NZ contributed two out of the four PIANC Climate Champions – Gildas Colleter for MarCom, and Greg Fisk for RecCom.
Huge congratulations to PIANC AU-NZ’s Scott Keane for his appointment in 2025 as a Vice-President in PIANC HQ’s Executive Committee (ExCom). Scott is only the second person from our region to serve on ExCom, following Neil Lawson’s participation as a Vice-President from 2017-2021.
Our plans for 2026 include hosting the fourth PIANC Asia Pacific Conference, Brisbane 25-27 August. This Conference theme is Connecting and Sharing – Oceania and Asia-Pacific Neighbours. Please come, you are all invited!
On a related matter, in 2025 the Board has formed a sub-group to progress Priority Objective #3.2 Provide support for smaller Pacific nations. We look forward to achieving more of our aims in 2026.
There is always a long list of people responsible for the continued success of PIANC AU-NZ to thank! A huge thank you to our hardworking Board, our Regional Chapters Chairs and Committees, our Technical Commission Leads, Climate Champions, Young Professional leaders, Working Group participants, our administrative support contractors (all part time), and all our members for your work, energy, passion and commitment. What a team we have!
Looking forward to more good work in 2026 with you all!
Luke Campbell, Chair PIANC AU-NZ