Ray-Mont Logistics is opening a new transloading facility in the United States that should improve Canadian container traffic on the West Coast, says a company official.
The facility is set to begin operations on Harbour Island in the Port of Seattle on Nov. 11th.
“There is a lot of U.S. traffic currently right now that runs through Vancouver just due to the lack of options in Seattle,” said Stephen Paul, vice-president of supply chain logistics with Ray-Mont.
“By taking that historical U.S. traffic and keeping it within the U.S., the ripple effect of that is it’s going to create more capacity in Vancouver.”
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This is Ray-Mont’s first transloading facility south of the border. It operates three in Canada — one in Vancouver, one in Prince Rupert and one in Montreal.
It will be the first of “many” planned facilities in the U.S. market.
“We launched Ray-Mont’s American freight forwarding arm eight years ago with this vision in mind,” company president Charles Raymond said in a news release.
“This is just the beginning. I feel we are at a turning point where we can start expanding and exporting our culture, our systems and our knowledge.”
Paul said there is still a container shortage in North America caused by shipping lines sending
empty containers back to China to be loaded with consumer goods. China is making up for lost ground caused by the COVID-19 shutdowns.
He said Ray-Mont is down about one-third of its normal loading capacity due to the container shortage issue.
Contact sean.pratt@producer.com
