Oct. 21, 2011
Canada Post today announced that it has selected Bird Design-Build Construction Inc. to design and build its new processing facility at the Vancouver International Airport in the City of Richmond, British Columbia.
Bird Design-Build Construction Inc. was chosen by Canada Post following a competitive Request for Proposal (RFP) process. A long-term land lease has been secured with the Vancouver Airport Authority, and the new postal facility will be situated on 42 acres of land at the city’s international airport. Construction on the 700,000-square-foot processing facility is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2011 and is expected to be fully operational in 2014.
Canada Post is investing $200 million in the new multi-purpose processing facility and related equipment. The plant at the Vancouver International Airport will process letters, parcels, packets and advertising mail under one roof.
Building a processing facility at the Vancouver International Airport is a strategic decision that will improve Canada Post’s access to vital transportation links, and allow Canada Post to continue to grow its eCommerce business, process the mail faster, improve its delivery logistics, and provide better customer service. Vancouver is responsible for postal delivery in British Columbia and the Yukon, and accounts for 10 per cent of national mail volumes.
Vancouver is particularly important to Canada Post’s operations as the city is a gateway to Asia-Pacific and a critical component of the company’s western operations. Vancouver is one of three international access points for Canada Post and plays an increasingly important role in facilitating trade with Asian countries. With its international role, the new Vancouver processing facility will house a Canada Border Services Agency operation to better serve western Canadians.
The new postal facility will be built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, and will take up as small an ecological footprint as possible. No full- or part-time employee will lose their job as a result of the new processing facility being built at the Vancouver International Airport.
Employees will move to the new airport location from the current mail processing plant at 349 Georgia Street W. and the Vancouver Parcel Delivery Centre in Richmond, B.C. Canada Post anticipates that it will continue to operate at the Georgia Street W. facility until 2015. The corporation will retain a strong retail and delivery presence in downtown Vancouver.
