Vancouver Island lands auto terminal

Port of Nanaimo processing center will provide another gateway for cars moving into Western Canada.    A new terminal for imported automobiles in the Port of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island in British Columbia is slated to open in January.
   The Nanaimo Port Authority said it will partner with Western Stevedoring and the auto division of SSA Marine — sister companies that are both owned by Carrix — to “design, build, finance and operate a multipurpose breakbulk terminal with an initial focus on European automobile import and processing.”
   The terminal will be located at the port authority’s Nanaimo assembly wharf, which formerly was used to assemble lumber for export.
   The port authority said a customer commitment and lease agreement for use of the wharf was signed, and the first vessel to call there is expected next January.
   Ewan Moir, president and chief executive officer of the port authority, said he could not yet reveal which automaker would use the wharf, but said, “The project has the potential to transform Canada’s import automobile supply chain by addressing the significant existing transportation bottlenecks, vulnerabilities and congestion while providing several compelling logistical efficiencies and environmental benefits.”
   Moir told American Shipper that “traditionally European cars coming into Western Canada have come into Wastern Canada, then they go through the processing center, then they’re moved onto trains.” After arriving at destinations in British Columbia or other parts of Western Canada they are offloaded and transported to dealers by “stingers,” trucks with trailers to carry automobiles.
   “If you have a very bad winter in Canada or you have the forest fire season that we had last summer, it really does pose some challenges to the logistical supply chain coming from east to west,” he said.
    Moir said with the new, larger locks being built at the Panama Canal, as well as the growth in automobile manufacturing in Mexico, carriers are looking at the use of using large, pure car-truck carriers to move cars directly between Europe and the West Coast of North America.
   Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics operates a terminal on the Fraser River in Richmond, B.C., that Port Vancouver says receives “nearly 100 percent of all Asian-manufactured imports destined for the Canadian market and serves more than a dozen of the world’s top auto manufacturers.”
    However, Moir said, “the auto terminals are near or at capacity in Vancouver and they are expanding but they are not expanding at a rate that was going to fit with the project” of the customer with which Nanaimo is working.
   The new terminal will be located on about 35 paved acres at the assembly docks where a 60,000-square-foot warehouse, a former sawmill, will be converted into a vehicle processing center.
   Nanaimo is located on Vancouver Island, about 23 miles from the mainland of British Columbia, so cars going to most of Canada will have to be transported by ferry or barge.
   That movement to the mainland “is in the hands of Western and SSA,” Moir said. “But I know they are looking at all avenues.” These include ferries run by Seaspan, B.C. Ferries or a separate barge or short-sea shipping service directly from the terminal. He said how cars are moved to the mainland may change as volumes grow.
   With 800,000 people living on Vancouver Island, service is frequent, he said.
   The terminal is expected to handle about 10,000 vehicles in the first couple of years and then grow to 40,000 vehicles by year six.
   The productivity gain from lower transport costs and the costs of congestion are projected at $20.5 million in the short term and up to $71.8 million in the long term.
   Because of the long supply chain, European car dealers have been leasing tracts of land around Vancouver to enable them to have sufficient inventory of varying colors and models of cars so “when a buyer comes in and says, ‘Yes, I want one and I’d like one in blue, please,’” they can promptly fill the inventory, Moir said.
   But with property prices in Vancouver among the highest North America, that has become costly, and Nanaimo can provide storage for that buffer inventory, he said. In the example cited, the dealer would call the vessel-processing center in Namaimo and it would “arrange for the blue one to be shipped the next day.”
   Moir said the project is also attractive because because it will have minimal disruption to the surrounding community.