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Port of Vancouver a middleweight in ranking of container cargo efficiency heavyweights

Vancouver an average performer, according to U.K.-based digital logistics company data that measures container dwell times for 64 major global ports
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Cargo containers stacked at a Port of Vancouver dock

The recent two-week ILWU Canada strike aside, the Port of Vancouver has improved its container cargo handling efficiency thus far in 2023 compared with 2022, but it remains in the middle of the pack for major global ports when it comes to the time it takes a ship’s containers to be offloaded at Vancouver docks and loaded onto rail cars or trucks.

Container dwell times as measured in the latest report from Beacon show the average number of days per month containers spend on docks in Vancouver is 5.2.

The U.K.-based digital logistics company’s data base measures dwell times gathered from 64 of the world’s busiest ports.

Vancouver’s 5.2-day average is better than some other major global ports such as Tokyo, Japan (6.2), and Busan, South Korea (6.4), but it ranks well below the efficiency of U.S. competitors such as Long Beach (3.8) and Houston (3.9).

All three have less efficient dwell time numbers than New York-New Jersey (3.1) and Charleston (2.5) in North America and in overseas in ports such as Colombo, Sri Lanka (1.8), and Sydney, Australia (2.1).

Vancouver’s average 2023 dwell time remains well below its target of 2.5 days, but it is still far better than the 7.5 days it logged in January 2022 and the 8.9 days it recorded in January 2023.

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