Greater Vancouver is the largest port market in Canada and one of the tightest industrial markets in North America. The Port of Vancouver moves more cargo by tonnage than any other port on the continent — a record 158 million tonnes in 2024, including 3.47 million TEUs of container trade — and the associated demand for container staging, chassis pools, trailer drops, and cross-haul drayage yards is unrelenting. The port's terminals at Vanterm, Centerm, Deltaport (Tsawwassen), and Fraser Surrey Docks all generate continuous IOS demand within trucking range of the harbour. Industrial vacancy in the Lower Mainland ran below 1% through 2023 and 2024 — the tightest sustained vacancy on record in any major Canadian market.
The structural geography compounds the scarcity. The Lower Mainland is constrained by mountains, the Fraser River, the US border, and the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR), which removes large tracts of land from industrial development. The result is a permanent shortage of industrial-zoned IOS parcels and the highest rates in Canada — often double or triple comparable submarkets in Calgary or Toronto. Annacis Island in Delta is the prototypical port-adjacent IOS submarket, hosting container, fleet, and 3PL operators on small, intensely-utilized parcels. Tilbury, also in Delta, anchors the LNG corridor (FortisBC's Tilbury LNG facility) and a growing cluster of energy-services and marine-industrial operators. Surrey's Port Kells, Newton, and South Surrey industrial belts host the largest concentration of mid-volume IOS in the region.
Burnaby, Richmond, and Coquitlam fill in the central Lower Mainland with port-overflow, intermodal, and 3PL demand. Langley pulls operators who have been pushed east by Surrey rates; it is the de-facto relief valve for the region and the fastest-growing IOS submarket by lease velocity. Operators are increasingly leasing satellite yards in Abbotsford and Chilliwack as a hedge against further compression in the core Lower Mainland.