Overseas trade propels Port of Vancouver to record cargo volumes

Prime Minister Mark Carney is given a tour of the DP World Centerm container terminal by Centerm chief operating officer Joel Werner, left, and Vancouver Fraser Port Authority CEO Peter Xotta, right, in Vancouver, on Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

MONTREAL — The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority says a record amount of cargo flowed through its terminals last year as shippers sought to grow overseas markets far from an increasingly protectionist United States.

Freight volumes at the Port of Vancouver rose eight per cent to 170.4 million tonnes in 2025, according to the federal agency.

The boost was driven by surging exports of grain, crude oil and potash as well as higher container and auto trade, all of which reached record levels.

A bumper crop allowed wheat shipments to push bulk grain exports to a record high, with western Canadian wheat reaching 35 countries last year in regions ranging from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East.

Crude oil exports from the port nearly doubled as the Trans Mountain expansion — the pipeline between Edmonton and Burnaby, B.C., enjoyed its first full year of operation as a twinned pipe in 2025 — threw open the floodgate to fossil fuel shipments bound for China and South Korea. Shipments to the U.S. also increased.

Container levels jumped nine per cent, fuelled by a big rise in imports of household goods from Asia to beat a container record set in 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 consumer buying frenzy.

Sharp declines in cruise ship visitors, forest products and canola exports due to Chinese tariffs — since eased — mitigated some of the gains.

Port authority CEO Peter Xotta says it has a key role to play as the federal government aims to ramp up trade with countries in Asia, Europe and elsewhere.

“As Prime Minister Carney looks to double exports to non-U.S. markets in the next decade, the Port of Vancouver is playing an outsized role in delivering more made-in-Canada products to more customers globally,” he said in a release.

Xotta pointed to “nation-building projects” such as a contentious container port expansion project at Roberts Bank south of Vancouver, a planned terminal approved by the federal government in 2023 that would increase the port’s container capacity by almost a third.

The port’s boost in freight surpassed Xotta’s own expectations from a year ago, when he told The Canadian Press he expected cargo numbers to rise between four and five per cent after a record-breaking 2024.

Xotta said in March 2025 that trade uncertainty caused by U.S. tariffs both real and threatened had rattled consumer confidence to the point that volume growth at the port would suffer as “heightened uncertainty” dampened the economic mood.

Amid an ongoing trade war with the U.S., Statistics Canada said last month that non-U.S. exports increased 17 per cent in 2025 while exports to America fell six per cent.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 9, 2026.

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press