Canada Post to build processing plant at Vancouver airport

Canada Post is to build a major new mail processing plant at Vancouver International Airport, it announced yesterday. The Crown Corporation is in the process of sealing a long-term lease with the Vancouver Airport Authority for a site next to the airport for a 700,000 square foot facility.

Hopes are for construction to begin later this year, once a designer and builder are selected, and for the plant to be operational in 2014.

The new facility, which will be built to LEED energy efficiency and environmental standards, will ultimately take over operations from the existing Vancouver Mail Processing Plant in the downtown area.

It is expected to house about 1,200 plant and administrative staff.

Canada Post said the current operation at 349 West Georgia Street would continue to operate until 2015, and in the mean time it would look for ways to offset costs incurred by ageing equipment as it builds the new plant at the airport.

The Corporation said Vancouver was “vital” for its national operations and for customers in British Columbia and the Yukon, as well as being a gateway for postal deliveries to the US and Asia-Pacific countries.

Last year, the city’s plant processed 644m pieces of mail – around 10% of national volumes.

“Vancouver’s mail operations are the third largest in our network. To maintain a strong and viable delivery offering and grow the business with domestic and international customers, we need to invest for the future,” said Bill Davidson, General Manager of Postal Transformation, Western Canada, Canada Post.

“The airport location would provide many opportunities to improve our operations and day-to-day logistics.”

West Georgia Street

Canada Post had put up its 50-year-old building at West Georgia Street for sale back in 2009, saying at the time that the location in the heart of the city limited processing capabilities and transport links.

Once the largest welded steel building in the world, it included a two-kilometre underground tunnel to the Canadian Pacific rail station that was never used because long-distance mail transportation took to the skies.

In a briefing to staff, Canada Post said much of the current mail processing equipment in Vancouver was now reaching the end of its operational life.

The new airport facility forms part of a multi-billion dollar investment by Canada Post in new infrastructure, equipment and technology to modernise its network.

The program will make for a more efficient postal service, Canada Post said, resulting in cost savings of $250m a year from 2017.