Prince Rupert, B.C. -   A decade after conceiving the vision for containerization, and only two years from the start of construction to transform the Fairview Terminal from break-bulk to containers, the Port of Prince Rupert's ship has come in.

Last evening, the 5,400 TEU (20-foot equivalent units) COSCO container vessel ANTWERP sailed into Prince Rupert Harbour and berthed at the new Fairview Container Terminal.

"The significance of the event goes well beyond opening a new chapter for Prince Rupert or even British Columbia," notes Prince Rupert Port Authority (PRPA) Chair Dale MacLean. "When it touched the shores of North America at the Fairview Container Terminal, the ANTWERP activated the first new transpacific trade corridor to be created on this continent in 100 years. The wave from this ripple effect will travel from Prince Rupert to the mid west and back again."

And not just any trade corridor. A collaboration of CN, Maher Terminals and the PRPA, also in partnership with the Government of Canada and the Government of BC, the new service is designed to offer shippers a new express gateway with unparalleled reliability, speed and efficiency to move their merchandise between the North American mid west and Asia.

"We were in the enviable position of building, not only this state-of-the-art container terminal, but a high-efficiency express trade corridor virtually from the ground up," explains PRPA President & CEO Don Krusel. "The extremely exciting day for us has now arrived to put our new business model to the test and begin to realize the full economic benefits for Prince Rupert and along the northern transportation corridor that we have envisioned."

The containers, filled with a variety of merchandise for large eastern retailers, originated in the Chinese ports of Hong Kong, Yantian, Qingdao, Dalian and Xiamen as well as Yokohama, Japan. This is part of the CKYH Alliance's Pacific Northwest  Butterfly South Loop service, of which COSCO is one of four shipping lines, that will see a container ship from a string of nine 5,400 TEU vessels make a weekly call to Prince Rupert.

Maher Terminal crane operators began offloading the first of about 1,100 TEUs from the ANTWERP shortly after midnight. The containers are being loaded onto Maher bombcarts, and driven through one of four Canada Border Service Agency's radiation portals before going to the intermodal yard less than 200 metres away for loading onto the rail cars. In the meantime, Maher's 17 reach stackers are offloading about 600 containers, many filled with paper products, that arrived on the CN train from the east and double stacking them on the terminal to be loaded onto the ANTWERP.

 "Unlike most terminals in North America, the Fairview Terminal is specifically designed for the efficient movement of containers between vessel and rail," explains Maher Terminals Executive Vice President Sales & Marketing Frans van Riemsdyk. "The terminal's on-dock rail operations maximizes efficiency and provides a favourable environmental impact when compared with terminals with larger concentrations of truck traffic and off-dock rail facilities"

The ANTWERP is scheduled to leave the Fairview Terminal tomorrow.  After calls in Vancouver and Seattle, the ANTWERP will sail back to Hong Kong to complete the butterfly service loop.