Rail Minister Winston Peters has announced the two new Cook Strait ferries will be named Kupe and Cook. He laid out the names along with operating arrangements and infrastructure contracts in a speech at Parliament on 17 July 2026.

The ferries are being built by a shipyard in China and are expected to arrive in New Zealand in 2029. KiwiRail, the state-owned company that runs freight and passenger rail, will operate them. The total project cost is NZ$1.924 billion, according to BusinessDesk. That is under the $2 billion limit Peters set for the project.

Peters said the names connect New Zealand's maritime past to its future, calling them "a look to the future with positive recognition of the past." He said he expected some people would object to the name Cook. Peters described his critics as "snivelling wokesters" who considered Cook "a harbinger of colonisation."

Every previous Cook Strait rail ferry has carried a name starting with "Ara-". The new names break from that convention. The Interislander ferry service has been running in one form or another for 64 years, under several different owners.

KiwiRail will run the ferries day-to-day. That arrangement is set to be reviewed in 2039, ten years after the vessels start service. KiwiRail will also have to set aside money over time so it can buy its own replacement ferries in 2059, rather than having to go back to the government for funding.

KiwiRail will pay standard port fees to CentrePort, Port Marlborough, and Ferry Holdings under the new arrangement.

Brian Perry Civil has been contracted to build ferry infrastructure in Wellington, and HEB Construction will do the same work in Picton. Both contracts are part of the wider port upgrades needed to fit the new vessels.

The announcement closes one chapter of a difficult replacement process. The coalition government cancelled the previous government's ferry project — known as iReX — when it came to power, saying costs had blown out to $3 billion. That cancellation came at a direct cost of $671 million, including money paid to a shipyard for the cancelled build.

Labour's transport spokesperson Tangi Utikere said the government had wasted three years and hundreds of millions of dollars on the ferry replacement process.

The broader context here is that this programme has now gone through two full rounds of design and purchasing under different governments, and the $671 million lost on the cancelled iReX project sits on top of the cost of the new build. The $1.924 billion figure for the new ferries and infrastructure does not include that $671 million. The true public cost of sorting out Cook Strait ferry capability is therefore well above the headline number.

The requirement for KiwiRail to save up for its own replacement ferries in 2059 is the part that matters most for the long-term future of the service. If it works, future governments will not have to argue over whether to approve funding for new ferries — something that has caused political deadlock and delay many times before. Whether KiwiRail can save enough over 30 years from a ferry service that has historically made thin margins is the question that will determine whether this plan holds together.