Vancouver, Canada’s largest commercial port and North
America’s third largest port, will be the site for a new import transload
facility that is designed to simplify operations and in turn by lowering truck
transport contribute to improvements in the environment. It will also address
the shortage of warehouse space experienced in the area in 2020.
Canadian Pacific Railway Limited and Maersk announced an
agreement to build and operate the new transload and distribution facility in
Vancouver to expand CP’s and Maersk Canada’s supply chain options for
customers. The CP transload facility will be an expansion of CP’s existing
Vancouver Intermodal Facility. According to CP, the new facility will further
leverage the existing rail infrastructure.
“CP’s unique landholdings in Vancouver enable us to bring to
market a first-of-its-kind transload facility that creates tremendous
opportunity for sustainable growth,” said CP’s President and CEO Keith Creel.
“Together with Maersk, the global shipping leader, we will transform intermodal
transportation in North America.”
The transload facility is designed to apply Maersk’s global
integrator of container logistics strategy and will offer customers access to a
multi-commodity transload facility that will rely on the substantial use of
rail instead of truck in the Vancouver market, as CP will shuttle containers to
and from the ocean terminals via rail. Maersk’s ambition to establish a
sustainable supply chain aligns with CP’s initiatives to fight climate change.
They believe that this combination will provide an effective and efficient
long-term intermodal solution for customers.
“This agreement
installs more agile supply chain options and capacity to and from Vancouver for
our North American customers,” said Omar Shamsie, President of Maersk Canada.
“We can now offer more responsiveness to the pace of business by giving supply
chain leaders more control of order timing/fulfillment through inland routing
flexibility, better velocity gained from one day savings of rail versus truck
and cost savings through seamless transload operations into domestic 53 foot
trailers. We feel this is quite compelling to lower their year-on-year cost
goals while creating a more sustainable supply chain with less truck
emissions.”
Discussing the current situation in the port, the companies
noted the impact of marketplace fluctuations, e-commerce demands and
omnichannel fulfillment. They noted that Vancouver warehouse space has been
tight in 2020, which, combined with Vancouver ports experiencing high
utilization, has placed pressure on supply chain performance.
The new import transload facility, is expected to be
operational in 2021, and the companies believe that it will greatly enhance
operations, simplify the current situation and create more end-to-end supply
chain solutions by reducing multi-modal handoffs.