Hanam Canada Corporation

Forwarders 

Hanam Canada can assist you with distribution of your products in the Canadian and US markets. We are familiar with the services of major retailers and their freight forwarders, transload, warehouse, and distribution centre operators listed in Exhibit 1. The total throughput of these import distribution terminals is 1.1 million TEUs per year about half the total import, export and empty container throughput. Key services are provided by import warehouses such as bonding, customs clearance, storage, sorting, transport, and distribution services.

Exhibit 1        Canadian import distribution terminals

The largest multi-client distribution centre in Western Canada is Maersk Distribution, located in Delta. Maersk has 60 truck bays and serves large retail clients including Ikea, Home Depot, Walmart, Canadian Tire and Sears. Maersk designs systems to reduce lead times and inventory costs by tracking and speeding up deliveries. For some clients they sort, palletized, and bar code goods to allow them to be shipped directly to specific retail stores.

Another major terminal customer is Schenker Stinnes Logistics with 400 locations around the world.  Schenker reduces the time for delivery of parts using automated labeling and order filling. Another major distributor, Sylvan Distribution, related to 3P Logix, brings containers from Deltaport to their warehouse in Richmond, sorts the contents and sends them out to the Brick, the Gap, and other retail stores.

In LA/LB more containers are delivered to the customers directly and more transloading is done outside the port area. Four transload warehouses in the Port of LA for the retail clothing industry, called the Port of Los Angeles Distribution Center, were much larger than anything in Canada: FMI 4,000 m² with 60 truck bays, Advanced Quality Logistics, 4,000m² with 60 truck bays, MJO Distribution 4,000 m² 60 truck bays and Nippon Express 2,000 m² with 40 truck bays. These companies provide international cargo management, customs documentation, warehousing and distribution services.

FMI offers garment hangers service, web based tracking, transload, deconsolidation, labeling, customized reports, automated billing, and other services to companies such as Jones Apparel, Polo Ralph Lauren, Mamiye Bros., and Federated Merchandising Group.  The buildings used by these import distributors are leased to them by the port. Containers from all of the marine terminals in the area arrive at these warehouses and are stored, unloaded, and transferred into trucks for distribution throughout California. Another transload facility near the Long Beach and Los Angeles marine terminals is California Cartage, Container Freight Station, Wilmington, with approximately 40 bays in and out.

In the Seattle Tacoma area one of the largest import distribution centers, 200,000 m³ is operated by the major US retailer Target.  Some of the import transload companies are: MacMillan Piper, Mid-Columbia Warehouses, Pacific Coast Container, Puget Sound International, South Sound Transload, Tri-Pak, United Warehouse Company, and Western Cartage.

In Canada 68 percent of the import containers are moved close to their destination by rail compared with only 50 percent in Los Angeles and Long Beach. In the US a much greater proportion of the containers are delivered directly by truck partly because of the greater population near the ports. In Los Angeles and Long Beach 18 percent of the containers are trucked to off-dock rail transload yards whereas in Canada, Canadian Tire is the main importer using this transport combination.

In transload facilities products are transferred from 40-foot by 8 foot wide by 8 foot or 8.5 foot high marine containers into 53-foot long by 8 foot wide by 9.5 foot high domestic containers. Two 53-foot domestic containers contain the same freight as three 40-foot containers. Although importers pay more for transloading they save about 30% on the rail freight.

In Vancouver and Delta the transload facilities are all off-dock. CP and CN intermodal yards in Coquitlam and Surrey are far from the marine container terminals and do not transfer contents of international containers into domestic containers or trucks. Their primary function is to load 53 foot domestic containers on and off rail cars. In Los Angeles and Long Beach 4 percent of the containers are transloaded on the dock. International containers may also be trucked to UP or BNSF rail consolidation facilities close to downtown LA, San Bernadino or East Los Angeles.

Large retailers such as Walmart, Home Depot, the Bay and Canadian Tire and freight forwarders such as Maersk, Direct, and Schenker transfer most cargo from the 40-foot international containers to the larger 53-foot domestic containers.  Goods are sometimes stored for a short time in warehouses where labels and hangers may be added and loads made up for orders by specific retail stores.  HBC Logistics, a subsidiary of The Bay, has the largest distribution center in Vancouver importing 50,000 TEUs per year that they transfer from international containers into their own fleet of 5,000 domestic containers for shipment to distribution centers in Calgary and Toronto.  Almost all these containers are used to carry domestic freight from Toronto back to Calgary or Vancouver.

Similarly Canadian Tire has a distribution terminal in Port Coquitlam operated for it by Canadian Fastfrate. Import containers are sorted into domestic loads for distribution centers in Calgary, Edmonton, and Brampton. Canadian Tire has a fleet of 2,300 domestic containers, a 300,000 square meter warehouse in Brampton, ON and a 100,000 square meter warehouse in Calgary. About 80 percent of the 700 international containers arriving each year for Canadian Tire in Vancouver are transferred to 53 foot containers, trucked to CP Rail’s Intermodal yard in Coquitlam, and shipped to Toronto by rail. The other 20 percent of the international containers are trucked directly to the Calgary warehouse.