Port hub · Vancouver Fraser
The Port of Vancouver set cargo records across the board in 2025: 170.4 million metric tonnes (+8%), 3.78 million TEU (+9%), a 30.3-million-tonne grain year and crude volumes doubled on the Trans Mountain expansion. It is Canada’s largest port — bigger than the next five combined — and its trade is 76% Indo-Pacific.
Nearly every line item of the Port of Vancouver’s 2025 annual report is a record. Total cargo reached 170.4 million metric tonnes (+8%); international trade 147 million tonnes (+11%); containers 3.78 million TEU (+9%) — Canadian trans-Pacific box traffic has effectively one door, and this is it. Grain set a 30.3-million-tonne record with wheat up 20% to 15.9 million tonnes across 35 countries; potash reached 10.5 million tonnes, also a record.
The structural shock is energy: crude oil volumes doubled to 24.4 million tonnes on the Trans Mountain expansion, while auto throughput set a record near 480,000 units and LNG bunkering began in 2025. The port authority has 29 terminals, reaches 170+ markets and sustains 132,000+ jobs. Roberts Bank Terminal 2 — a project sized at $100 billion of trade capacity — is in procurement.
Vancouver’s cargo profile is the mirror image of its airport: 76% of international trade heads to the Indo-Pacific, with China at 36%, Japan 13% and Korea 9%. Where Halifax faces Europe and Montreal the St. Lawrence, Vancouver is Canada’s Pacific hinge — the physical counterpart of YVR’s +15.6% passenger growth.
The TIO framing: watch grain and containers, not crude. The crude doubling is a one-off pipeline effect; the durable signals are the TEU trendline and the wheat numbers, which tell you whether Canada’s Asia trade is deepening or merely re-routing. With Roberts Bank T2 in procurement, the mid-decade capacity question is already being answered.
The TIO Read: 170.4 million tonnes is not a statistic, it is Canada’s balance of payments with the Pacific. Vancouver’s port is the only door at which the country’s Asia trade knocks — 76% of international cargo value, one box gateway, one grain valve. The 2025 across-the-board records (TEU, grain, potash, autos) say the Pacific orientation is deepening, not drifting. For readers tracking the city: the port’s TEU line and YVR’s Asia-Pacific passenger line are the same curve measured in two units. When both rise together, Vancouver is doing what it was built to do.
Subscribe to the digest and receive key market signals every two weeks.