'Timing is fortuitous': New Prince Rupert port facility adds Canadian export capacity just as trade war heats up

An aerial view of Canxport, a new container trans-loading facility owned by Ray-Mont Logistics at the Port of Prince Rupert, which is aimed at increasing Canadian exports of agriculture, forestry and petrochemical commodities. Photo credit: Port of Prince Rupert.

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By a quirk of timing, a Montreal-headquartered logistics company has opened a new $750 million container-handling facility at the Port of Prince Rupert aimed at expanding Canada’s international trade, just as a trade war with the U.S. heats up.

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On Friday, Ray-Mont Logistics, CN Rail, and the port opened what the transportation company is calling Canxport, a terminal with the capacity to trans-load commodities shipped to the port by rail into containers for shipment overseas.

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The new facility, a huge expansion of Ray-Mont’s existing capacity at Prince Rupert, is designed to handle large quantities of agricultural goods, break-bulk forestry products and petrochemical products, starting with bulk plastic-resin pellets, according to company executive Stephen Paul.

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However, the list of products could increase to potash and even bulk shipments of raw bitumen, he added.

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Ray-Mont has been working toward building the $750 million terminal, at the front-end of $3 billion in expansion projects at the port, for the better part of a decade.

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Paul, Ray-Mont’s chief strategy officer, said “the timing is fortuitous, (with) everything going on,” considering escalating trade tensions with the U.S.

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“It allows us to immediately provide solutions for people who want to hit those goals,” Paul said, referring to Canada’s ambitions to double its non-U.S. export trade by 2035.

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Canada’s West Coast Ports, including Prince Rupert, are positioning themselves as “the backbone” for that expansion, having handled $409 billion of Canada’s export trade in 2025.

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Also coincident to Friday’s opening of Canxport, the Port of Prince Rupert, Port of Vancouver and Port of Nanaimo, jointly released an economic impact study highlighting their potential.

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Peter Xotta, CEO of the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, said the facilities “have an outsized role to play” in the expansion of trade.

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With its own expansion projects, Xotta said they are “poised to unlock one of our country’s greatest trade opportunities,” in the Indo-Pacific.

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In Prince Rupert, Paul said Ray-Mont’s phone has been ringing more often lately, particularly among agricultural shippers.

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“People are definitely exploring and saying, ‘OK, with (the) trade war and various different things that are going on, could you do this?'”

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He added that, “We’re open for trying to deliver more volumes and solutions, and the Port of Prince Rupert has an abundance of empty containers. It’s a perfect recipe to move exports out of the country effectively.”

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The new CanXfacility, a huge expansion of Ray-Mont’s existing capacity at Prince Rupert, pictured here, is designed to handle large quantities of agricultural goods, break-bulk forestry products and petrochemical products, starting with bulk plastic-resin pellets. Photo by Government of B.C. /PNG

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Initially, Canxport will have the capacity to handle up to 400,000 twenty-foot-equivalent-units worth of cargo per year, with the capacity to expand, Paul said. That would be an additional six million tonnes of cargo moving through the port, according to the Port of Prince Rupert.