Canada Post plans big expansion of processing hub at Vancouver airport

Canada Post planning major expansion of processing facility at Vancouver International Airport

Exterior of the existing Canada Post Pacific Processing Centre at 5940 Ferguson Road just north of the North Runway of Vancouver International Airport. (Google Maps)

Nearly a full decade after it first opened its relocated and expanded Canada Post Pacific Processing Centre at Vancouver International Airport (YVR), a major expansion of the facility is now being eyed.

Canada Post is looking to construct a new building immediately west of the 2014-built processing centre at 5940 Ferguson Road, which is located north of the North Runway.

The existing building is already one of British Columbia’s single largest warehouse/logistics-style industrial buildings.

According to the federal government’s project description, the new west building will contain new processing equipment for parcel and package sorting, office space, docking and parking spaces for trucks and trailers, and employee parking. Pre-construction activities will include land clearing, pre-load for geotechnical stability, excavation, and grading.

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“This expansion project is required by Canada Post to address capacity, growth, and improving service,” reads the project description.

“The new building will be designed to be highly energy efficient, and to meet the Canada Green Building Council’s Zero Carbon Building Standard with a net zero carbon design. It will be designed for accessibility according to universal design standards. The Project will aim to divert 90% of construction and demolition waste.”

canada post pacific processing centre richmond vancouver yvr site

General location (highlighted in red) of the new west building to expand the Canada Post Pacific Processing Centre at Vancouver International Airport. (Google Maps/Daily Hive)

Last week, the federal government’s Impact Assessment Agency issued a bulletin announcing that Canada Post and Vancouver Airport Authority can now proceed with the Canada Post Pacific Processing Centre Expansion as it is “not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects.”

Currently, the project has highly limited details, and no design has been released to the public yet.

“We have been in discussions with Canada Post for a potential expansion of their facility on Sea Island. This impact assessment is part of the regular course of planning for projects of this nature. As discussions with Canada Post are ongoing, we do not have details to share at this time,” reads a statement to Daily Hive Urbanized by Vancouver Airport Authority upon inquiry today.

As well, Canada Post also told Daily Hive Urbanized that it “is constantly reviewing the needs for capacity in its network to serve the country.”

Currently, the Vancouver Airport Authority and Metro Vancouver Regional District are in the process of completely relocating and rebuilding Ferguson Road west of the Canada Post facility in order to create larger airside development parcels for the Northlands Greenfield Land. The new roadway, which will reach completion in Summer 2024, will also serve as the access route for heavy trucks reaching the construction site of the new $10-billion Iona Island Wastewater Treatment Plant.

ferguson road sea island new configuration yvr 1

The existing western segment of Ferguson Road will be removed (red), the new replacement western segment of Ferguson Road under construction (green), and the existing eastern segment of Ferguson Road will be retained (yellow) at Vancouver International Airport. (Metro Vancouver Regional District)

Canada Post Pacific Processing Centre Vancouver International Airport YVR Richmond Sea Island

Canada Post Pacific Processing Centre at Vancouver International Airport, as seen from Ferguson Road. (Google Maps)

vancouver international airport yvr 2021 land use amendments

2021 Sea Island land use changes. (Vancouver International Airport)

In 2021, YVR announced its plan to develop vacant strips of land — totalling several hundred acres to the north of the North Runway and to the south of the South Runway — for trade-enabling warehouse, logistic, light industrial, and commercial uses. These uses would complement YVR’s aviation operations and provide the airport authority with more ancillary revenue.

YVR also has a more recent strategy of becoming a major industrial and multi-modal cargo transportation hub.

When the Canada Post Pacific Processing Centre opened in 2014, it was stated that the then-new 700,000 sq ft facility cost $200 million. It was part of Canada Post’s strategy to capitalize on the major growth of e-commerce across Canada and the Asia-Pacific Rim and streamline its operations in an effort to be more efficient and cut down on costs. The pandemic has only accelerated the growth of e-commerce in the retail marketplace.

The facility joins Toronto and Montreal as Canada Post’s third major hub for processing and distributing international mail and parcels.

Canada Post’s YVR facility was an expanded replacement of both the 1956-built facility at 750 Hamilton Street in downtown Vancouver and the Vancouver Mail Processing Plant on No. 6 Road Richmond. The historic four-storey downtown Vancouver facility on an entire city block had become highly inefficient and severely undersized for regional processing needs, and there were also transportation challenges with Canada Post trucks travelling between the airport and downtown within increasingly congested streets.

canada post pacific processing centre richmond vancouver yvr

2014 opening of Canada Post Pacific Processing Centre at Vancouver International Airport. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

When it opened a decade ago, Canada Post’s YVR facility employed about 1,000 people, with teams working around the clock in shifts of about 300 people. It had a significantly expanded capacity to sort 12,000 packets, 10,000 parcels, and over 41,000 letters per hour on about 30,000 ft of conveyors. A parcel could make a full trip on the multi-layered conveyor system in just under three minutes.

In 2013, shortly after the relocation to YVR, Canada Post sold the downtown Vancouver property to BC Investment Management Corporation, the provincial pension fund, which subsequently created the for-profit real estate development company Quadreal Property Group to manage and grow the value of its property holdings. The city block was sold to Quadreal’s parent entity for $130 million.

Since the latter half of 2023, the mixed-use office and retail redevelopment of the former Canada Post facility, now known as The Post, has seen a gradual opening of its uses and spaces, with Amazon workers taking up the office spaces, and various new retailers, restaurants, and services, including Loblaws City Market, which opened earlier this year, and Evolve Strength, which will open later this year.

2014 opening of Canada Post Pacific Processing Centre at Vancouver International Airport. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

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