The Port of Vancouver — the main gateway for consumer goods entering Canada from the manufacturing powerhouses in Asia — is among the worst performers, ranking 368th out of 370 ports around the world, according to a new report.
Port efficiency has taken on a new level of urgency, given the extreme supply disruptions that have come to characterize the economic recovery from the COVID recession. The world woke up to the critical role of maritime traffic in March 2021 when a container-laden ship ran aground in the Suez Canal, clogging a key shipping passage for the better part of a week, leading to ripple effects that lasted much longer. The incident served as a harbinger of the future havoc the pandemic would inflict in the form of port congestion.
Now, as companies and countries reconfigure supply chains and economists debate what’s causing the fastest inflation in decades, ports are facing fresh scrutiny. Policymakers are parsing whether West Coast ports that experienced congestion, such as Vancouver but also Los Angeles and Long Beach in the U.S., underperformed, or were simply overwhelmed by a heightened demand for consumer goods. At the port of Vancouver, for example, trade publications reported in December that 60 ships were waiting to berth, even as mudslides from wildfires had severely limited rail service out of the port. But far from deterring traffic, between January and April, the port reported that inbound container laden traffic grew 30 per cent.
This is an excerpt from the Financial Post.