Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Snapper to sue over contract termination

Updated at 5:48 pm on 25 August 2012

Snapper plans to sue Auckland Transport for more than $10 million for cutting it out of a new public transport ticket project.

The company had been adapting its technology to fit into a $100 million universal ticketing system there.

Auckland Transport dropped Snapper because it said the company could not meet a deadline at the end of November to adapt ticket machines fitted to the NZ Bus fleet.

But Snapper's chairperson Rhoda Phillippo blames Auckland Transport and other parties involved in the project for failing to deliver key project components on time, such as hardware and software that were needed for Snapper to integrate its technology into the Hop system.

"We're talking about tickets to test to see how they worked across the system. Really serious components and probably the biggest one that's been missing is how Auckland Transport were going to test the Snapper Solution to see if it worked. That's been missing as well."

Rhoda Philippo says notice of the contract cancellation came out of the blue and Snapper plans to sue Auckland Transport for more than $10 million.

Auckland Transport says it will now work with Thales, a French company, to introduce the Hop system across the whole bus fleet.

Copyright © 2012, Radio New Zealand