The company employs the equivalent of 600 full-time staff and is in operation at all hours to allow for quick turnaround of cargo.

The removal of the "s" from "Ports" reflects the 2018 sale of the Onehunga seaport to Auckland Council and signifies the organisation's transition to a single-seaport operation on the Waitematā Harbour.

While it is much closer to the industrial areas of South Auckland, the access via the shallow entrance of Manukau Harbour, and the smaller facilities, make it much less significant than the main port, and it is used mostly for coastal shipping within New Zealand,[4] such as for bringing in cement from Westport.

[10] The sale did not go through and in 2016 it was announced that the port would be sold to NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), which wanted to build an interchange for a $1.8 billion east–west motorway link on the land.

Due to the country's very strict biosecurity regulations, formerly administered by the MAF and now by its successor agency MPI, cars (and many other goods) have to pass through a decontamination facility, which strongly increases turnover times.

[6] So far, the largest ship to visit was Queen Mary 2, which had to be diverted to Jellicoe Wharf in the freight part of the port due to its size.

However, the largest one-day turnover came in February 2007, when Statendam and Sapphire Princess were due in Auckland to exchange around 8,000 people at the terminal, the equivalent of 19 Boeing 747 jumbo jets.

Annual dividends to Auckland Regional Holdings and its predecessors in the 15 years to 2006 totalled NZ$500 million.

[15] Auckland's trade, by virtue of being the (now) largest city of an island colony nation, has to a large degree always depended on its harbours.

Starting from the original wharves in Commercial Bay in the 1840s, and expanding via the land reclamation schemes that transformed the whole of the Auckland waterfront throughout the 19th and 20th centuries (and still continue today, especially at Fergusson Wharf), the port became the largest of New Zealand (and has been since at least 1924, incidentally the same year the Port of Onehunga was opened).

New facilities were also built on the other side of the harbour, at Devonport, with the 'Calliope Dock' being the largest drydock in the southern hemisphere in 1888.

[23] After the war, the expansion continued, with the Import and Freyberg Wharves opening in 1961, as well as the creation of the Overseas Passenger Terminal on Princess Wharf.

[23] In October 1993 20% of the shares were floated to the public on the New Zealand sharemarket when the Waikato Regional Council sold its stake.

[29] In 2019, as part of the 10-year budget 2018-2028, ACIL was disestablished, its share holdings and functions were transferred to the council [2] Now being the third largest container terminal in Australasia, as well as New Zealand's busiest port,[23] little remains in terms of the original facilities.

[17] In its 2008 plan, POAL proposed to extend the Fergusson and Bledisloe terminals into one large area mainly intended for container handling.

The change is to increase the port's capacity by 250%, and allow ships with up to 7,000 containers to use its facilities, where the current limit is about 4,000.

The extension would include the purchase of even larger cranes, topping out at 94m, while containers on the wharf may be stacked as high as six-storey buildings.

[30] In 2009, POAL noted that while container business in the past year had increased and profits in that sector had grown due to productivity gains and more consolidation of the industry towards larger ports like Auckland, there was a significant reduction in car import business due to the recession, which reduced the company's profits by 26% to $12.6m for the last half year to 31 December 2008.

[35] In late 2011, Ports of Auckland became engaged in an industrial dispute with workers represented by the Maritime Union of New Zealand, after negotiations broke down over the expiry of the existing collective contract, and plans by the port to contract out its services to casual workers.

[43] The ITF's president, Paddy Crumlin, subsequently declared Ports of Auckland a port-of-convenience on 9 March.