Port of Vancouver volume up 1% last year despite pandemic, supply, flooding
BNN Bloomberg
The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority says cargo volumes increased one per cent to 146 million tonnes last year despite the pandemic, global supply chain challenges and extreme weather in B.C. at the end of the year.
The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority says cargo volumes increased one per cent to 146 million tonnes last year despite the pandemic, global supply chain challenges and extreme weather in B.C. at the end of the year.
The country's largest port says record container and foreign bulk volumes helped maintain cargo volumes despite trade challenges in a year in which the cruise season was cancelled due to COVID-19.
Grain volumes declined 13 per cent after eight straight record years due to drought in Western Canada in the second half of the year.
The number of shipping containers passing through the port increased six per cent to 3.7 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) in 2021, a record for the fifth year in a row.
Amid the increase in container trade were an elevated number of empty containers, putting pressure on Canadian exporters as containers were rushed back to Asia to accommodate strong consumer demand in North America.
The port is warning that serious supply-chain problems will occur in a few years because west coast container terminals are expected to run out of capacity by the end of the decade.
Manufacturing sales fell 2.1 per cent to $69.9 billion in March as sales of petroleum and coal products and motor vehicles fell, Statistics Canada said Wednesday. Olivia Cross, North America economist at Capital Economics, said the result was not as bad as the early estimate that pointed to a drop of 2.8 per cent, but it still means sales fell 0.9 per cent over the first quarter. "The weakness of manufacturing sales in March suggests that the economy lost momentum heading into the second quarter, matching the message from the earlier preliminary estimates for retail sales and GDP," Cross said in a note. Last month, Statistics Canada released a pair of preliminary estimates for real gross domestic product and retail sales for March that both suggested the data points were essentially unchanged for the month. Driving the manufacturing sales numbers for March was an 8.0 per cent drop in sales of petroleum and coal products to $8.0 billion as volumes fell 6.1 per cent. Sales of motor vehicles fell 7.9 per cent to $4.6 billion in March as sales of motor vehicle parts lost 2.8 per cent. Statistics Canada says retoolings at several major auto assembly plants in Ontario continued to impact auto manufacturing and contributed to the lower sales for the month. Meanwhile, sales of machinery rose 2.9 per cent to $4.5 billion in March. The increase came as sales in all seven machinery industry groups climbed higher, led by commercial and service industry machinery which gained 41.6 per cent. Overall manufacturing sales in constant dollars fell 2.0 per cent in March. Total inventories for the month were largely unchanged at $121.0 billion in March, while unfilled orders fell 0.8 per cent to $104.8 billion. This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 15, 2024.