The Port of Vancouver, located in British Columbia (BC) on Canada’s Pacific coast, is the country’s largest port and the key gateway in Canada’s efforts to double global exports to non-United States trade partners. And the port, administered by the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority (VFPA), is in line to get substantially larger in the near future with the development of a new container terminal — a container terminal that could add 2.4 million TEUs to the port’s throughput by the mid-2030s.
Port of Vancouver Gateway
A deeper dive into the Port of Vancouver’s numbers illustrates just how important the Port is to both the Canadian economy and to the country’s supply chain. For instance, in 2025 the Port had a container throughput of 3,778,996 TEUs, up 9% on the 3,473,822 handled in 2024. To put the Port of Vancouver’s container contribution in perspective, Canadian container ports as a whole, handled around 6.3 million in 2025. And by way of port-to-port comparison, the Port of Montreal, the number two container port in Canada, had a throughput of 1.52 million TEUs, and is operating at nearly full capacity.
Unsurprisingly, Asia is the main source of container traffic for the Port of Vancouver. In terms of containerized tonnage, China has been the leading trade partner for the Port on both the inbound and outbound sides of the container equation [particularly if Hong Kong is added to the total]. But trade is diversifying as Jeff Scott, Vice President Operations and Supply Chain for the VFPA, noted. “More than three-quarters of the port’s total international trade volumes moved to the Indo-Pacific economies and we expect that region to account for about 50% of the global economy by 2040. So, we’re definitely focused on that. China remains our largest trading partner. [However], … we’re seeing an increase in growth in Japan — it’s up about 13%, South Korea up about 9%, [and] we’re also seeing growth in emerging economies such as Malaysia and India,” Scott said. And the Port of Vancouver’s cargo growth is critical to Canada’s strategic goal to double Canadian exports with non-US markets over the next decade.
New Robert Banks Terminal 2
For the Port of Vancouver, the continued growth in containerized cargo is a clear sign that the Port needs to develop more container handling capacity — and a handling capacity designed to accommodate the next generation of containerships.
In April 2026, VFPA and Global Container Terminals (GCT) announced they had agreed on a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) “to explore a partnership to advance Robert Banks Terminal 2 (RBT2) at the Port of Vancouver.”
The MOU is for one year and the initial part of the process is to build the ‘partnership’ and as Scott explains, “The parties are actively working together right now. So, the port and GCT are meeting on a weekly basis to outline and assess the benefits synergies and the operational expertise that GCT can contribute as the potential terminal builder and operator. This collaboration is being supported by Canada’s Major Projects Office as well. And these discussions are intended to validate the opportunity to confirm whether the parties can reach an alignment in terms of the joint venture by the end of the MOU period.”
And it isn’t just the MOU timeline in play, as the desire is to get shovels in the ground as soon as it is feasible as the RBT2 project is critical to the national interests as well as the Port’s, “We’re working towards a pretty aggressive timeline, but there’s lots of momentum right now. We’ve announced our construction partner. There’s been a subsidiary created to manage the project and that has its own board for governance. We’ve also had a referral to the Major Projects Office for coordination of having this project designated a ‘project of national interest’. So, all of those are moving in the right direction and we’re targeting to be in a position to start construction on the land mass in 2028 and that would allow the terminal to be operational in the mid 2030s,” Scott said of the project’s timeline.
The container terminal is being designed to handle the next generation of containerships — vessels that could be 24,000 TEUs in size. And the scale of the project is significant, “We’re looking at a minimum expansion of about 2.4 million TEUs, but we believe that through the synergies and collaboration, we could probably grow that further, but the project is based upon 2.4 million additional TEUs,” Scott said.
With a project adding 2.4 million TEUs or more to the port’s annual throughput the question is more than the handling within the terminal gates. As Scott outlined the process to handle the load, “When we look at this project, we’re also looking at the supply chain as a whole. So, part of our review is looking at ensuring that all of the components of the supply chain, whether that be the road network, the rail network, the marine network, all can accommodate and facilitate this growth.” Scott added, “There’s also several projects … that are involved in the Major Projects Office as well. So, we’re looking at all of those in tandem together to make sure that the terminal is ready and infrastructure can help facilitate this level of expansion.”
Terminal Visibility
Just as important to the operations of a container terminal such as ship-to-shore gantry cranes, reach stackers and straddle carriers, is unseen management systems that convey data and other information to the Port’s relevant stakeholders. As Scott explains, “For us, it’s really about real time visibility and ensuring that we have the data that enables us to manage, oversee, and facilitate the movement of goods.” According to Scott the VFPA has been working on a “supply chain visibility dashboard and that’s really an open access web-based interactive reporting tool.”
The tool allows reporting on “performance metrics across the marine [and] railroad system. It also helps facilitate daily decision-making, so users can go on there and see the metrics and then we can interact with stakeholders. That dashboard continues to be evolved and enhanced.”
Another tool that is being deployed is the “active vessel traffic management system”. Scott says that it is “a scheduling and management system of all vessel movements, coordinates commercial ship traffic to improve reliability, efficiency, and port calls. That’s resulted in reduced wait time, reduced congestion, optimized anchorage, and ultimately helps to lower emissions and improve safety. So those two initiatives have been extremely successful, and we’ll continue to build off of that.”
And like the Port itself, the system is evolving, “When we look forward, it’s really about building out more of the real time monitoring tools. So, enhancing those, incorporating things like GPS data, webcam monitoring, some of those other components. And then we’re also looking at participating in a port community system. So, that’s a single point access system to make it easier for users to have a single area where they can do data input or consolidation of any reporting that they have to do within the port. That’s just going to make things much more efficient, much more timely, in terms of the interaction and engagement with key stakeholders.”
