A New Global Route from Europe to Canada

The face of Canadian car shipping may be changing forever. For the first time ever, European auto manufacturers will be able to deliver directly to Western Canada. Cars will be shipped from Europe to Nanaimo Port Authority. They’ll use the recently expanded Panama Canal in order to do this.

Canadian Car Shipping

Nanaimo is located on Vancouver Island. From here, cars will be barged over to mainland Canada for distribution. Vancouver is Canada’s third most populous city, and British Columbia is its third most populous province, with bordering Alberta just behind.

Nonetheless, Vancouver is Canada’s busiest container port. It handles more than 50% of the country’s container cargo.

Initial loads of 400 to 500 cars will be shipped on carriers next January to get the process started. This will be aided by the conversion of a current warehouse into a vehicle processing center. For processing, these vehicles need to be inspected and sometimes converted to adhere to Canadian regulations.

It’s expected that the entire operation should see 12,000 vehicles processed in its first year, ramping up to about 50,000 vehicles annually once it’s in full swing.

A Global Transport Chain

Before, Canadian car shipping to the West Coast was handled via train. The long ride from Eastern Canada to Western Canada wasn’t exactly practical or inexpensive, however.

One of the biggest advantages to this plan is Europe’s ability to ship through the Panama Canal, deliver some vehicles to Mexican ports, pick up Mexican manufactured components and products, deliver some of these goods in Western U.S. ports while picking up new products, and continue on to deliver the rest of the vehicles and goods to Canada. It connects a few different legs of existing, shorter routes in order to create a more efficient global route: Europe to Mexico to the U.S. to Canada.

This kind of transport chain helps each economy involved, and helps to decrease shipping rates and product costs along the way. This approach to shipping to the West Coast increases shipping volumes and the jobs created in maritime shipping, ports, and land-based shipping. Who knew that Canadian car shipping could be so beneficial?