Prince Rupert’s ambitious target - become Canada’s second largest port

It was barely a decade ago that Don Krusel, then chief executive of a remote, long-struggling bulk port in northern British Columbia (population 13,000), launched a bold blueprint that surprised many marine industry observers: a container terminal to foster trade between North America and Asia. He candidly qualified this strategy as “a Hail Mary pass for the port.” In fact, the visionary port helmsman had noticed, among other things, that thanks to the Great Circle route Prince Rupert was more than 1,000 nautical miles closer to Shanghai than Los Angeles-Long Beach. Moreover, it was served by CN, the railway with the most extensive reach of any carrier right to the Gulf of Mexico. Carrying the torch today with comparable zeal is Shaun Stevenson, president and CEO of the Prince Rupert Port Authority since June of last year.

Like his predecessor, Stevenson is pursuing an ambitious agenda: for arguably the fastest-growing container port on the continent to become Canada’s second busiest maritime gateway after Vancouver, overtaking Montreal, within five years.

This was reinforced through a recently released container terminal master plan that outlines the potential of future container terminal capacity and sequencing of development at the Pacific gateway some 500 miles north of Vancouver. The planning work identifies the long-term potential to develop six to seven million TEUs of capacity through the development of multiple terminals. This would possibly propel Prince Rupert into the league of Top 50 world container ports.

A significant percentage of Prince Rupert cargo volume is with the US Midwest via the CN rail network. In 2018, Prince Rupert handled one million TEUs (an increase of 12%) and 27 million metric tons of total cargo. The forward momentum is continuing in 2019, with container throughput up 8% in the period to end April.

The plan’s research was completed with the assistance of AECOM, a global leader in infrastructure planning and development. It considered capital costs, operating efficiencies, optimization of construction sequencing to minimize disruptions to ongoing operations, and mitigation of human receptor impacts (air quality, noise and lighting) as criteria to determine the feasibility and sequencing of container terminal potential at the Port of Prince Rupert.

“Conducting this work ensures we have a clear understanding of the future potential for terminal development and contributes to a vision for the future of our container business to respond to the growing market demand for capacity at the Port of Prince Rupert,” explains Stevenson.