Interesting Facts

• The 2008/09 season was a cruise ship record breaker - 56 visits and over 100,000 people to the port

• The biggest ever shipment of kiwifruit from the Port of Tauranga - nearly 90 million individual fruit! The Refrigerated ship MV Knud Lauritzen carried more than 2.6 million trays of fruit to Belgium in May 2005.

• Mount Maunganui boasts New Zealand's first man-made surfing reef —made of giant synthetic bags filled with sand.

• Pass the salt … mountains of it. Dominion Salt at the Mount is the biggest salt processing plant in the country.

• International tourists now account for 30% of the visitors to the Western Bay —but spend three times more than Kiwis!

• The Western Bay of Plenty coast is the first in the country to get tsunami warnings installed.

• Mauao, the Mount is 232 metres high and approximately 250 sheep graze its slopes. An average of 700,000 people walk the base track every year. In May 2009, 63,964 people went around the Base Track, and 12,478 people ventured to the summit.

• More than 300,000 people use the Mount Maunganui Hot Salt Water Pools on an annual basis