Duke Point Terminal expansion: Nanaimo’s deep-sea berth and neighbours

At 750 Jackson Road, on the east side of Duke Point, a land blessing and a sod-turning in the spring of 2025 opened construction on a plan to rebuild a cargo berth that has stood there since 1982. A DP World release dated April 8, 2025 named three partners at the ceremony: the Snuneymuxw First Nation, the Port of Nanaimo and DP World itself. The plan is to nearly double the berth, from 182 metres to 325, and swap a diesel crane for two electric ones. DP World's project page gives September 2027 as the target for completion.

The Duke Point terminal is easy to confuse with the ferry dock a short drive away. What follows is the cargo side, the ferries, the money behind the expansion, the people who live and walk next to it, and the industrial land fight that broke out next door in 2026.

A 1982 berth on federal land

The federal project listing describes the site plainly. The terminal stands on federal land about one kilometre south of the BC Ferries terminal. The existing berth dates from 1982 and has a low-tide depth of 13.5 metres. The Nanaimo Port Authority owns it, and DP World Nanaimo Inc. operates it as the authority's tenant.

A 2023 description in Inside Logistics fills in the working parts: a 40-tonne container gantry crane, a mobile harbour crane rated at 104 tonnes with a 51-metre reach, about six hectares of paved storage, and a barge berth of 82 metres beside the main one. The same article lists what crosses the dock: product exports, containers, kaolin and salt coming in, fuel transfer and project cargo. One detail does not line up. Inside Logistics gives the deep-sea berth as 170 metres long, while the federal listing and DP World both say 182. None of the sources explains the difference.

The 2015 crane and the barge berth

The current project is the second push in a decade. In February 2016, Nanaimo Port Authority chief executive Bernie Dumas told the Business Examiner that the port was in the final stages of a $9.3-million upgrade at Duke Point. A 104-tonne mobile harbour crane had arrived the previous summer and a new barge berth was close to finished. The point, he said, was to let short-sea barges to mainland terminals and ocean-going ships work the terminal at the same time.

The numbers he released for 2015 explained the timing. Imports through the port rose 23 per cent over 2014 and exports 12 per cent, for a combined 4,850,327 tonnes. Container traffic, measured in twenty-foot equivalent units, jumped 39 per cent. Ship calls held almost flat at 241.

Duke Point is only one of the Nanaimo Port Authority holdings; downtown it also runs the Assembly Wharf, a cruise dock and the Boat Basin.

Ferries at the other end of the point

BC Ferries opened its Duke Point terminal on June 9, 1997, with Premier Glen Clark at the ceremony. Wikipedia, citing the Times Colonist, puts the cost at $42 million and the Duke Point Highway that feeds it at another $50 million. The aim was to steer commercial traffic away from BC Ferries' Departure Bay terminal in the heart of the city and ease the jams through downtown. The route is now numbered 30, and Wikipedia's figures show about 1.05 million passengers through the terminal in 2024.

The dock has had bad days. On December 20, 2011, the Coastal Inspiration made a hard landing that damaged both the berth and the ship, and the terminal stayed shut for more than four months while traffic went through Departure Bay instead. In January 2019, BC Ferries scheduled a two-day closure to replace the vehicle ramp and apron, which CHEK reported had been in place since 1997. A closure here pushes traffic onto Departure Bay, which already had most of the coast's longest BC ferry waits in 2016 and where, since October 2025, every vehicle arriving from Horseshoe Bay has needed a paid booking.

Freight has its own dock as well. Seaspan Ferries runs a terminal at 850 Jackson Road with two working berths and a layover berth for roll-on, roll-off truck traffic. Its logistics arm operates a 10-acre paved yard there with a two-section barge ramp that handles barges of up to 6,000 tonnes.

The 2021 lease and the $105-million plan

On February 24, 2021, the Port of Nanaimo signed a 50-year lease with DP World, a Dubai-based port operator. At a virtual news conference three days later, port authority chair Donna Hais said the expansion would "bring Vancouver Island to world markets and put the Island on an even playing field with the rest of Canada in terms of trade." Container ships would unload at Duke Point and their boxes would be split onto barges for Vancouver and elsewhere.

The funding came together quickly: $46.2 million from the federal National Trade Corridors Fund and $15 million from a provincial economic recovery program, with DP World covering the rest of what partners called a $105-million project. Port chief executive Ian Marr forecast about 1,000 new jobs. Mayor Leonard Krog called it "the most significant investment we've seen in the Port of Nanaimo in a very, very long time." Port chief operating officer Mike Davidson said the work would take one to two years. That estimate did not hold, since the formal start came four years later.

Western Investor added a point that rarely made the headlines. Most of the land around the terminal is held by two owners. Harmac Pacific bought more than 1,250 acres at Duke Point in 2008, and Seacliff Properties bought 726 acres in 2018. A Colliers broker said buyers had offered up to $650,000 an acre and been turned away.

In April 2023, Ottawa added up to $600,000 for the port authority to study further expansion, including whether Duke Point could help relieve bottlenecks at Vancouver's deep-sea terminals.

What the review approved, and the figures that drift

Because the terminal sits on federal land, the port authority, Transport Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada had to decide whether it was likely to cause significant environmental harm. The assessment opened on October 29, 2021 and closed with a determination on November 18, 2024: not likely, provided mitigation was carried out for riparian and marine fish habitat, archaeological and heritage resources, and air quality, noise and light.

The sources agree on the shape of the project but not on every number.

The federal listing also explains the cranes: two "recently relocated" 80-foot-gauge electric quay cranes, so container ships and barges can be worked at once, while the diesel crane is removed. The 2025 release adds a 26,000-square-foot covered area for pulp.

The release also stated that the project had the "free, prior and informed consent" of the Snuneymuxw First Nation. Chief Mike Wyse said the nation was honoured to support local economic growth, and Ian Marr described the expansion as a catalyst for reconciliation and local jobs.

Next door: Cable Bay and the Phoenix Way hearings

The neighbours on Duke Point do not object to the port with one voice, and the loudest recent argument was not about the terminal at all. In April 2026, Nanaimo Forest Products, which runs the Harmac pulp mill, took to public hearing an application to rezone most of 950 Phoenix Way, a forested property of about 212 acres beside the Cable Bay Trail, from rural resource to heavy industrial. More than 400 people came to the first session on April 16, according to NanaimoNewsNOW.

Opponents spoke about runoff, noise and the trail. Snuneymuxw Elder Geraldine Manson told the hearing there were signs of a village site on the property more than 3,500 years old, and that artifacts had been removed and the land bulldozed in the 1970s. Before the second session, Chief Wyse said in a statement that development on treaty-protected sites "cannot proceed without our free, prior and informed consent." Speakers also pointed to a January 2026 spill, when the province traced an estimated 350 to 1,600 litres of oily water entering the sea at Duke Point to Environmental 360 Solutions.

Supporters argued the opposite case. Company chief executive Paul Sadler said "Nanaimo is desperately short of industrial land," and the Greater Nanaimo Chamber of Commerce backed the application.

On April 30, Coun. Ben Geselbracht noted more than 900 written submissions, about 94 per cent opposed in the application's current form. His motion, passed 8-1, suspended the hearing and sent four recommendations back to staff and the company, including fewer emission-heavy uses and a wider buffer along the trail. It was not the first zoning fight on the peninsula: in 2014 Nanaimo rejected a garbage incinerator at Duke Point, but the I4 heavy industry zone that allowed it stayed open.

Jack Point and Biggs Park, beside the industry

Between the Duke Point Highway and the water lies a 32-acre city park, most of it left natural. Jack Point and Biggs Park runs alongside the highway connector to the ferry terminal, and its trail leads 2.5 kilometres from the parking lot to the tip of Jack Point. The city lists bald eagles, sea lions, seals and harbour porpoises among the things to watch for, with views over the Nanaimo River estuary, downtown, Protection Island and Gabriola.

The names are older than any of the industry. The city says Jack Point is named after Jack Doholt (1819 to 1905), who lived on the point for about 40 years and sold milk and hay in town, and that the point was once an island at high tide. Biggs Park recalls John Biggs, a carpenter and miner who took up the land after his Hudson's Bay Company service.

If you go, use the lot at 655 Jackson Road rather than the highway shoulder; the city is specific about that, and a pedestrian tunnel takes you under the road into the trees.

As of the city's online file, the Phoenix Way application is still marked active, with its public hearing listed as scheduled rather than finished. The port, meanwhile, is working to a September 2027 date for a berth roughly twice as long as the one built in 1982.