Opposition is mounting from the Te Puna community to a proposed container depot on Te Puna Station Road.

A group of locals, who have named their cause Wrong Business, Wrong Place, have formed a petition against the proposed terminal at 297 Te Puna Station Road.

They are presenting a courtesy copy of the petition, with more than 1500 signatures, to the Bay of Plenty Regional Council today.

Last week, Wrong Business, Wrong Place spokesperson Alison Cowley, other neighbours of the site and DMS Progrowers chief executive Derek Masters presented the petition to the Western Bay of Plenty District Council.

The petition was received by mayor Garry Webber, council chief executive John Holyoak and councillor Don Thwaites.

Alison says the petition is asking district council to provide public notification of the application so the community can have their say.

'The petition is a way of saying to council, ‘this will affect us', and making sure that council knows it is a really big deal to the community,” she says.

Alison, whose property overlooks the Te Puna Station Road site, says the community are concerned about potential increased traffic and the safety of cyclists and walkers that use the road.

'The road is already congested. A lot of people are really stressed and really worried about it.”

Resource consent for the establishment of 'yard-based industrial activities” at 297 Te Puna Station Road, has been lodged by Te Puna Industrial Ltd and formally received by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council on January 18.

Te Puna Industrial Ltd was incorporated in May 2021 and ContainerCo has a 50 per cent allocation of the shares.

ContainerCo is an independent container depot with 12 branches around the country including one in Mount Maunganui.

The company provides container refurbishment, modification and storage of empty containers as well as sales and leasing.

Alison says there are concerns from nearby orchard owners about the biosecurity impact on their export crops of storing containers nearby.

'The crux of the issue is it's the wrong business in the wrong place. For environmental reasons, for horticultural, agricultural, export and cropping reasons, for traffic reasons, for amenity reasons and for noise reasons.”

Fellow neighbour Paul Winwood says they're concerned about the potential pollution, noise, dust and environmental impact.

'We're passionate about the area because we live here.”

Council planning and regulatory services group manager Rachael Davie says under the Resource Management Act 1991, there is no presumption that resource consent applications must be notified.

'Instead, in order to determine whether an application should be publicly notified, a consent authority must carefully follow statutory steps in the RMA,” she says.

'Given the prescriptive nature of the statutory tests, the consent authority does not have a general discretion as to who should be notified of a resource consent application.

'It is not entitled to take into account a person's desire to be notified, or their stated opposition to a particular proposal,” she says.

'It must instead work its way carefully through the statutory tests to determine the outcome. Failure to follow those steps carefully could result in judicial review of the consent authority's decision by the High Court.”

The 11.97 ha property at 297 Te Puna Station Road sold for $4.7million in February 2021, according to property website OneRoof.

It is one of three properties that make up Te Puna Business Park, all zoned industrial under the Western Bay of Plenty District Plan.

Te Puna Industrial Ltd has been approached for comment