The new box terminal is positioned to receive some of the Asian cargo that would previously have been shipped to the busy US west coast port of Long Beach as the Prince Rupert alternative would save freight forwarders up to 58 hours in transit times.
"The Prince Rupert project is going to open a lot of new opportunities for us," said Dexter Muller, senior vice president of community development for the Memphis Regional Chamber, quoted in The Daily News, Memphis.
"You can bypass Long Beach by going to Prince Rupert and then come down and bypass Chicago and go straight to Memphis. It opens a big opportunity for us to get a considerable amount of traffic from the west coast."