It could take into September before the ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert fully recover from the 13-day dockworker strike that idled both western Canadian ports and disrupted trans-Pacific sailing schedules, industry observers told the Journal of Commerce Friday.
The strike ended Thursday when the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (Canada) and the British Columbia Maritime Employers Association agreed on terms for a tentative four-year contract.
But forwarders, shipping lines and trucking interests say they are advising their customers it will take weeks — possibly into September — for operations at Prince Rupert and Vancouver — Canada’s largest port — to return to normal.
The rule of thumb in the port and marine terminal industry is that for each day a port is shut down, it takes three to five days to recover, Julia Kuzeljevich, director of policy and communications at the Canadian International Freight Forwarders Association, told the Journal of Commerce.
“Maybe end of summer, early September,” Kuzeljevich said when assessing the timeline for a full recovery of the ports.
Views on the recovery period vary, but it is clearly not a matter of days.
“We look at it in weeks — three weeks to recover for every week of [a] shutdown,” an executive at a carrier that calls at Vancouver said.
Given the fact that eastbound trans-Pacific volumes have been lighter than usual and Canada’s agricultural exports are not yet in high season, the time for recovery may be a bit shorter, the source said.
Still, David Bennett, chief commercial officer at Canadian forwarder Farrow, said he would be “surprised” if the recovery period is only four or five days per day of shutdown. Bennett said the actual recovery could take as long as 10 days per day of shutdown — more than four months — given how dependent Vancouver and Prince Rupert are on shipping containers via rail to their major hubs in Toronto, Montreal and Chicago.
He noted that Canadian railroads issued temporary bans on sending trains to the West Coast from day one of the dockworker strike, and it will take some time to reposition trains and cars to the ports.
“We anticipate it will be weeks before there is a return to normalcy,” Bennett said.
CPKC expects ‘prolonged’ recovery
Canadian Pacific Kansas City Railway (CPKC) said Friday it is working closely with customers and marine terminals to clear the traffic backlogs as quickly and efficiently as possible. However, “given the duration of this strike — nearly two weeks shutting down most terminals at Canada’s largest port — supply chain recovery is expected to be prolonged,” a CPKC spokesperson said.
A Canadian National Railway (CN) spokesperson said CN is “now focused on implementing its orderly resumption plans to resume its movements to and from the ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert.”
David Earle, president and CEO of the British Columbia Trucking Association (BCTA), said two-thirds of the containers moving through Vancouver leave by rail, and clearing that backlog while receiving new inbound containers will take “weeks and weeks.” According to the Port of Vancouver website, rail container dwell times at all four of its container terminals were more than seven days, a level that is normally not reached.
As for truck gate traffic, Earle said BCTA members did not report any serious bottlenecks early Friday, although Vancouver did not reopen until Thursday’s evening shift.
A spokesperson at the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority said the port will apply a priority-based anchorage allocation system to balance the needs of all business sectors and commodities. Fourteen container ships were backed up outside of Vancouver when the strike ended Thursday.
“Recovery measures include close collaboration and monitoring to ensure port resources are assigned to best support time-sensitive cargo movement and ensure equitable distribution of shared resources,” the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for the Prince Rupert Port Authority said operations there resumed Thursday evening and continued on Friday’s day shift, with both berths at the Fairview Container Terminal expected to be occupied.
“Operations have ramped up,” the spokesperson said. “The terminal is expecting to depart additional trains to begin the process of clearing backlogged cargo.” In addition to the two vessels at berth, three additional container ships were holding offshore Prince Rupert.
Source:
Mongelluzzo, B. (2023, July 14). Post-strike recovery for Western Canadian ports measured in weeks, not days: Sources. Journal of Commerce. https://www.joc.com/article/post-strike-recovery-western-canadian-ports-measured-weeks-not-days-sources_20230714.html