When Canada Post’s new $200-million state-of-the-art Pacific Processing Centre (PPC) officially opens in Richmond Thursday, it will be one of three international access points in Canada.
The facility, which can sort over 40,000 letters per hour, replaces two older plants: the Vancouver Parcel Delivery Centre and the Vancouver Mail Processing Plant.
It is also strategically located near Vancouver International Airport to capitalize on the huge growth in ecommerce in the Asia Pacific area and across Canada.
“We wanted to get our entire operation in one facility,” said director of operations Scott Hall, who showed a Vancouver Sun team around the centre on Wednesday. “The downtown facility was undersized and not efficient. We’re expanding our market in the Pacific Rim. And being close to the airport gives us an opportunity to process more mail.”
The facility itself can only be described as massive. Visitors looking down from the second floor to the main floor are greeted with a beehive of activity — there are 900 full and part-time employees — sorting packages and mail arriving on 10 kilometres of conveyors inside the 65,000-square-metre building.
Hall also noted that the new centre also accommodates Canada Border Services. “They do their mail inspection here.
“We also accept air containers here.”
Volume of mail
On a typical day, PPC will process four million pieces of mail, including letters, parcels, packets, publications and other marketing mail. That includes 10,000 parcels, 12,000 packets (small padded envelopes) and up to 41,000 letters per hour.
During the busiest seasons (Christmas, for example), PPC has the capacity to process 150,000 parcels, 200,000 packets and three million letters per day.
The building
The 65,000-square-metre PPC is located at 5940 Ferguson Road in Richmond.
The building is 500 metres (half a kilometre) long by 140 metres wide and sits on 17 hectares of land.
Where the mail comes from
After the U.S., six of the 12 highest countries for volumes to Canada are in the Asia-Pacific region. They are, in order, China, Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, Japan and Korea.
Total 2013 products sent to Canada were 8.3 million from China, 6.3 million from Hong Kong, 4.1 million from Australia, and a total of 4.1 million from Singapore, Japan and Korea.
About one-third of all inbound products enter Canada through Vancouver.
As well, parcel volumes in B.C. related to ecommerce are up 29 per cent in the first six months of 2014 over the same period in 2013.
How it’s sorted
About 900 employees sort mail circulating on 9,100 metres — about nine kilometres — of conveyors. It takes three minutes once a parcel is placed on the main conveyor, about 460 metres long, until it’s sorted.
As well, the facility’s scan tunnel — with several cameras — captures bar code information on packages from any angle in order to speed up operations.
“It doesn’t matter if the item is upside down or standing,” said director of operations Scott Hall.
From the time of arrival, mail takes about eight hours to be processed and get out the door to its next destination.
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