As Canada’s largest port, the Port of Vancouver is Canada’s western gateway to the world, connecting Canadian businesses and consumers with 170 trading economies. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic in 2020, Canadian businesses continue to rely on the port to keep goods moving.
The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority remains focused on our strategy to grow existing terminal capacity to support future trade demand, build transportation infrastructure, and develop supply chain visibility tools to enhance optimization and planning.
In 2020, progress was made on container terminal growth with the Centerm Expansion Project, which will expand the terminal footprint by 15 percent and increase terminal handling capacity by over 60 percent, from 900,000 20-foot container equivalent units (TEU) to 1.5 million TEU. Additionally, the proposed Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Project (RBT2), a 2.4-million-TEU container terminal, is a top priority as we progress through the final stages of the federal environmental assessment. The expansion at Centerm and the RBT2 project are intended to address projected TEU volume growth of three to four percent per year over the next 10 years.
Along with industry and government partners, the port authority is also leading the development of $1.2 billion in road and rail gateway infrastructure projects regionally. Over the next five years, these projects will remove transportation bottlenecks, decrease traffic congestion, enhance safety, and allow greater fluidity and increased capacity throughout the entire gateway.
Finally, the port authority has been leading the way in the implementation of new digital supply chain technologies with the West Coast Supply Chain Visibility Program. When the program is complete, the port authority and partners will be able to monitor supply chain performance across commodities, predict -terminal-specific arrival times, identify and address operational constraints, and improve forecasting and planning.
Despite fluctuating economic conditions, we are confident in our ability to continue to weather the challenges ahead and facilitate Canada’s trade growth through our gateway.