We went looking for the port's battery-storage approval. The planning register held one we missed

The claim is a good one and it matters locally: the estuary that ships the country's coal becoming the entry point for the batteries that replace it. The port said in July it had become the first port in NSW approved to safely store grid-scale lithium-ion batteries at its Mayfield Multipurpose Terminal, that the approval was granted by the NSW Government in late 2025, and that it followed extensive collaboration with the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure.

The coverage we saw, including ours, repeated that description from the same media release. A reader who wanted to check it would reasonably go looking for the document. So we did.

Where we looked

How SafeWork NSW handles dangerous goods storage

SafeWork NSW's own guidance sets out the regime in a sentence. If you store, handle or process Schedule 11 hazardous chemicals (dangerous goods) that exceed the quantities specified in the legislation, then you must notify us, it says. Notification means lodging a form, a list for each storage area, a site plan, and an emergency plan with Fire and Rescue NSW. The regulator's stated reason is operational rather than administrative: Notification is crucial to the provision of an effective emergency response by Fire and Rescue NSW.

The thresholds sit in Schedule 11 of the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2025, and the same page notes a vocabulary change worth knowing if you go looking yourself: WHS legislation refer to dangerous goods by the new term 'hazardous chemicals'.

So SafeWork NSW's part is a notification, not an approval it issues, which is why its side of the search turned up nothing. We wrote here that no register could hold an approval at all. That was wrong: the planning register for the terminal’s consent holds the hazard and fire safety approvals described in the correction above. Which approval the port means is taken up below.

What this does and does not mean

It does not mean the port's statement is wrong, and the correction makes that plainer. The planning register holds two approvals for Mayfield Berth 4. A Department director, as nominee of the Planning Secretary, approved the Final Hazard Analysis, whose scope includes storage of lithium-ion batteries at the Mayfield Cargo Storage Facility, and approved the Fire Safety Study on conditions. The study letter does not mention batteries; the hazard analysis says it feeds into the study. Both letters are dated 1 June 2026 and carry reference numbers. Any reader can open them.

What they do not settle is the port's own description. The port said the approval was granted in late 2025. The two letters we read are dated 1 June 2026 and answer submissions dated 21 April 2026. The hazard analysis points elsewhere: for its battery storage scope it cites a modification of development consent DA 8137 dated 23 September 2025, and that document is public. On that date the Independent Planning Commission, as the Planning Minister’s delegate, approved the modification of DA 8137, the consent for the Mayfield Cargo Storage Facility at 109 Selwyn Street, Mayfield North, for Storage of lithium-ion batteries within the Mayfield Cargo Storage Facility. The Commission’s statement of reasons describes an application for up to 600 batteries, up to 300 received a month, each stored for no more than 12 months before going on to grid-scale battery projects across NSW; dangerous goods had not been permitted on the site before. It also explains why the Commission, not the Department, decided it: the applicant had disclosed a reportable political donation, and a 2011 delegation sends such applications to the Commission. A 23 September decision is the likeliest match for the port’s late-2025 date, though we have not asked the port to confirm it, and it may mean a later step, such as the approval of the plan the consent requires. The consent’s conditions require a Battery Storage Management Plan, prepared in consultation with Fire and Rescue NSW and approved by the Planning Secretary, before any batteries are stored there. The planning portal’s page for the modification lists its application and determination documents; we have not seen that plan or its approval. (We have since checked the register’s approved plans for the facility and the port’s own compliance page, and neither lists it: see the note of 20 October.) The Fire Safety Study approval also carries the condition that Operations must not start until approval from FRNSW is obtained, and the documents we read do not say whether Fire and Rescue NSW has given it.

Our view, labelled as such

The first point is about us. We searched the right register, read the project page for its modifications, and did not open its Post Approval documents, where the answer sat. Then we wrote that no register could hold one. An empty search is a finding about the search before it is a finding about the record, and we should have written it that way.

The second is about the regime, and it survives the correction in a narrower form. Two parts of the NSW system touch dangerous goods storage at a wharf. The planning side published its approvals with reference numbers, and they can be checked. SafeWork NSW's side is a notification, and we found no public register of notifications, so we could not see whether one was lodged or what it covers. The port says demand for battery handling has grown rapidly, and a community near a wharf would be better served by being able to look up both halves. That is a reasonable thing to notice as the volumes rise.

Do you know which approval the port meant, or work in this area? Tell us and we will read it and log the outcome on this page.