(The following story by Nathan Vanderklippe appeared on the National Post website on January 23.)
VANCOUVER — The operator of Vancouver’s biggest container port is blaming foul winter weather for the worst backlog in its history, which has left nearly 7,000 containers piled on the docks of the Fraser River, just south of Vancouver.
“As of this morning [the backlog] is 6,800,” said Colin Donaldson, the manager of Deltaport, which is owned by TSI Terminal Systems Inc. “It’s the highest ground count we’ve had for rail. ?This is all weather-related.”
The problem is so severe that some ships have had to sit at anchor as they wait to unload, while steamliners such as Evergreen America Corp. — the world’s fourth-largest shipper, with eight vessels docking in Vancouver every month — have diverted their traffic to other ports.
The backlog isn’t likely to clear before mid-February, when the Chinese new year creates a lull in shipping loads, said Mark Hallman, a spokesman for Canadian National Railway.
A Canadian Pacific Railway spokesman said the delays were “nowhere near that range” for traffic being shipped by CP.
Mr. Hallman said the delays are a result of the series of severe windstorms that hit the West Coast this winter.
That weather ground port cranes to a halt when it struck, creating about 10 days of lost production since late November, he said. But problems with the rail lines have also contributed to the delays, said Alexander Goveas, Evergreen’s vice-president for Eastern Canada.
“There have been derailments and avalanches and this has caused a disruption,” he said. “There are only two rail tracks from Western Canada and this has ? created a disaster status for Deltaport in recent weeks.”
According to an e-mail sent to clients by Evergreen agent Steven Toth, the problem is even worse than the huge delays caused by a four-week truckers’ strike in 2005, when the backlog got so bad that TSI declared force majeure – a legal clause that freed it from legal liability. Those delays cost Canadian retailers an estimated $100-million.
As of Jan. 15, the delays had generated a backlog of 69,500 metres of containers at Deltaport — or nearly 100% of the port’s storage capacity — and 30,500 metres at TSI’s other terminal, Vanterm, wrote Mr. Toth. About 80% of the Deltaport containers were to be shipped by CN.
To compensate, the rail line is sending in additional railcars — Mr. Hallman would not say how many, citing corporate confidentiality — and has offered to truck refrigerated containers and dry boxes to other Vancouver ports.
None of that has helped Joe Meurer, however. The owner of Meurer Trading had four containers filled with supplies used in oilsands conveyor belts offloaded at the port on Jan. 6. Only one has since been transferred to an eastbound train, and he is worried his customers will be hit with penalties when they can’t meet contracted deadlines.
“We’re looking at delays of anywhere between three to four weeks. Vessels are actually anchoring out in the Vancouver port because they have no place to put the containers.” he said.