Port Kembla's vehicle imports rose 26 per cent in August. The national new-car market rose 0.4
NSW Ports publishes a trade report every month, and the August one landed on 18 September. It counts 34,531 imported motor vehicles across Port Kembla in the month, against 27,419 in August a year earlier. Two months into the financial year the port has taken 81,324 against 57,148, a rise of 42.3 per cent and 24,176 more vehicles. Over the same August the national new-vehicle market grew 0.4 per cent. Those two numbers describe different things, and the gap between them is the story.
We reported in August that Port Kembla is the state's biggest car terminal rather than only a steel port. This is the next thing the data says: that trade is not merely large, it is growing far faster than the market it feeds.
What the port counted
| Period | FY27 | FY26 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| July | 46,793 | 29,729 | +57.4% |
| August | 34,531 | 27,419 | +25.9% |
| Financial year to date | 81,324 | 57,148 | +42.3% |
The two monthly figures add to the year-to-date figure in both years, which is how we checked we were reading the table the way NSW Ports intends: 46,793 and 34,531 make 81,324, and 29,729 and 27,419 make 57,148. July was the bigger month and the bigger jump. August was smaller and still ahead by a quarter.
Vehicles are not the only roll-on roll-off cargo. Counting everything that drives on and off a ship, the port handled 86,877 units for the financial year against 61,693, up 40.8 per cent. Measured in revenue tonnes rather than units, imported roll-on roll-off cargo is up 35.1 per cent year to date.
The comparison, and its limits
The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries publishes national new-vehicle sales every month. For August 2026 it recorded 100,939 sales, up 0.4 per cent on August 2025, and 811,388 for the year to date. So the national market was close to flat in the month Port Kembla grew by a quarter.
These are not the same measurement and we are not going to pretend they are. A vehicle counted at Port Kembla has crossed a wharf; a vehicle counted by the Chamber has been sold to a customer. They happen at different times, and a car landed in August may be sold in October or later. Imports also include vehicles that are not new-car retail stock at all. What the two series can support is a comparison of direction: national demand grew barely at all, and this port's intake grew sharply. A port whose volumes track its national market would not produce that gap.
The most likely explanation is that Port Kembla is taking a larger share of the vehicles arriving in Australia rather than that Australians suddenly bought far more cars. We cannot prove that from these two sources alone, because neither publishes a port-by-port split of national vehicle arrivals, and we are labelling it as our reading rather than a finding.
What is arriving, in the national numbers
The Chamber's August release is mostly about what kind of car is selling. Battery electric
vehicles reached 27,089 sales, 24.9 per cent of the market
and up 171 per cent on August 2025, which it describes as the highest monthly battery electric
total recorded in Australia. Chief executive Tony Weber said the changes
continue to reinforce the need for infrastructure settings that keep pace with the market
.
He was talking about charging rather than wharves, but the point carries: a fleet changing this
quickly arrives somewhere first, and for a growing share of it that somewhere is Port Kembla.
The rest of the port is not moving the same way
| Cargo class | FY27 | FY26 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Import, roll-on roll-off | 1,372,424 | 1,015,638 | +35.1% |
| Export, break-bulk | 102,488 | 58,973 | +73.8% |
| Export, dry bulk | 1,342,079 | 1,309,793 | +2.5% |
| Import, dry bulk | 1,224,595 | 1,310,598 | -6.6% |
| All cargo | 4,269,559 | 3,913,495 | +9.1% |
Total trade is up 9.1 per cent for the year to date, so the port is busier overall. But the growth is concentrated: roll-on roll-off imports and break-bulk exports are well ahead, dry bulk exports are close to flat, and dry bulk imports have fallen. In August alone dry bulk exports were 597,587 revenue tonnes against 774,310 a year earlier, a fall of 22.8 per cent, though the year-to-date figure remains slightly ahead.
We are not going to tell you what that dry bulk is. The report groups cargo by class and not by commodity, so the table does not say how much of it is coal, grain or anything else, and we have not put a name to it that the source does not support.
Why this matters here
Port Kembla is the region's largest industrial site and the argument about its future is usually conducted in terms of steel and coal. On these numbers the fastest-moving part of the business is neither. Vehicles arrive, are stored and are trucked out, which is land, labour and road freight rather than furnaces, and it is growing at a rate that compounds quickly if it holds.
Two months is a short window and we are not treating it as a trend on its own. The next report, covering September, is due around the middle of October on the pattern of the last eight. We will read it.
Sources
- NSW Ports, Monthly trade reports, NSW Ports Monthly Trade Report Aug 2026 (FY27), published 18 September 2026, PDF read in full on 1 October 2026: every Port Kembla figure in this article, being imported and exported motor vehicles and other roll-on roll-off units for the month and the financial year to date with the prior-year comparatives, and the non-containerised trade table in revenue tonnes by cargo class.
- NSW Ports, NSW Ports Monthly Trade Report Jul 2026 (FY27), published 19 August 2026, PDF read on 1 October 2026: the July monthly figures, used to confirm that the monthly numbers sum to the published year-to-date figures in both years.
- Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, August vehicle market remains buoyant, published 3 September 2026, read 1 October 2026: national new-vehicle sales of 100,939 for August 2026 and the 0.4 per cent change on August 2025, the year-to-date total of 811,388, the battery electric total of 27,089 at 24.9 per cent of the market and up 171 per cent, and the quoted words of chief executive Tony Weber.
- The Escarpment, Port Kembla is the state's biggest car and grain terminal, not just a steel port, 24 August 2026: our earlier reporting on the composition of the port's trade.
How we did this. The two NSW Ports trade reports were downloaded as PDFs and read directly; the site refuses an ordinary fetch, so they were retrieved through a browser and checked for completeness before being parsed. Every Port Kembla number in this article is the report's own published figure, including the percentage changes, which NSW Ports prints rather than us calculating. The one piece of arithmetic that is ours is the difference of 24,176 vehicles, which is the published 81,324 less the published 57,148, and the check that the two monthly figures sum to the year-to-date figure in each year. The national figures are the Chamber's published numbers. We did not adjust either series to match the other and we have said plainly above why they cannot be treated as the same measurement. We checked NSW Ports' own news page on 1 October 2026 and it carries no announcement about vehicle trade, terminal capacity or a new shipping service, so no explanation for the increase is offered here. We have not contacted NSW Ports, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries or any shipping line, and the reading offered about market share is labelled above as ours.
Spotted an error, or work in the vehicle trade and read these numbers differently? Tell us and we will check it against the NSW Ports reports and log the outcome.