McAdam Eyes Inland Port Role
Rural communities with rail links could capitalize on Port Saint John's billion-dollar expansion with local jobs, warehousing, and new economic opportunities
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The village of McAdam could be the potential location for a new logistics hub as Port Saint John looks inland for warehousing to support Canada’s ambitious goal to double non-U.S. exports.
Speaking at a celebration marking the completion of Port Saint John’s $247 million west side modernization project, New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt said communities like McAdam are already signalling they want in.
“There’s actually lots of communities that are really interested in having the opportunity to be a part of that inland logistics,” she said. “The folks in McAdam are very keen, looking at options.”
With port capacity growing and container volumes expected to surge, Port Saint John, the federal and provincial governments, DP World and rail lines CPKC, CN and NB Southern are considering how to move goods efficiently from Saint John’s port lands at the mouth of the St. John River to warehousing, manufacturing, and distribution sites outside the city.
Holt explained that means following the rail line and asking where inland facilities make the most sense.
“If you kind of follow the rail line, where could it go? And what are those options? Where could we stop and get access to all of the pieces so that we could build more things here, benefiting from the port’s proximity, and then send more things out?”
For rural communities such as McAdam, the Government of Canada’s aggressive push to reduce the country’s economic dependence on the United States creates an opportunity to align their historic rail infrastructure with Canada’s new trade strategy.
By serving as inland ports or logistics hubs, rural communities can attract new warehousing, light manufacturing, and value-added processing tied directly to the increased flow of containers through Saint John.
Follow the River Inland
Over the past decade, private sector partners, led by DP World, which holds a 30‑year lease to operate Port Saint John’s container terminal, have invested more than $750 million in equipment and rail upgrades.
Container traffic has more than quadrupled since DP World took over terminal operations in 2017, reaching nearly 240,000 TEUs in 2025 up from 57,400. DP World now projects growth of more than 300,000 TEUs in 2026 with a long-term goal of 1 million TEUs.
The west side container terminal now includes an additional berth, a deepened and widened channel, expanded laydown space, and upgraded intermodal connections. These changes have increased on-dock container capacity to more than 800,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs).
Holt hopes this growth, currently driven by shipments from Ontario west, will enable increased development and exports from provincial products and companies.
“We want to see more export and trade built from this with New Brunswick-made products and New Brunswick companies,” she said, noting that Port Saint John CEO Craig Bell Estabrooks has been meeting with communities around New Brunswick to gauge local interest for potential inland port sites.
The port modernization itself is already expected to generate more than 900 net new jobs, according to Holt, but the real long-term payoff may lie in how effectively the province connects that waterfront growth to inland communities.
Transport Minister Wants To Move Faster
Federal Transport Minister Steve MacKinnon says Ottawa is ready to back ambitious ideas from Saint John and New Brunswick – as long as local leaders arrive with focused, well-thought-out plans.
“We’ve got a federal government that is more than willing to step up and support literally anything you walk in the door that is a coherent, plausible vision for this place,” MacKinnon said.
He framed this as both an opportunity and a challenge: local proponents must come forward with solid, realistic proposals that match the scale of Saint John’s growing role in national and global trade. If they do, he suggested, federal support will follow.
Speaking at the Saint John Chamber of Commerce January 13th luncheon, MacKinnon said rural and inland logistics hubs must become central to the country’s transport and trade strategy.
MacKinnon said the goal is to relieve pressure on constrained urban waterfronts while spreading economic opportunity beyond city cores.
Canada’s traditional model of concentrating heavy industrial and logistics activity directly on port lands is no longer sustainable, he said, particularly in cities like Saint John and Vancouver, where geography and long-standing neighbourhoods limit expansion.
“We have a bottleneck problem,” MacKinnon said. “We have to take as much as we can away from the water’s edge and move it inland, so that we can create a better, more seamless experience for people moving things in and out, and create some open real estate on these harbourfronts, so we can develop the ports even more, create more activity.”
Under this vision, coastal ports can serve as high-efficiency gateways, while nearby rural and suburban areas become hosts for intermodal terminals, distribution centres and manufacturing facilities connected by rail and road.
“With the second biggest landmass in the world, we need to be the first best at moving goods from east to west,” he said, warning that slow approvals, aging infrastructure and labor instability have already cost Canada major investments.
“We’re never going to sacrifice the environment, we are always going to work with our Indigenous partners, but we’re no longer taking 12 years to study port infrastructure or any infrastructure projects in this country.”
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Let’s create strong unions to have trained staff and safe working environments. To many towns and communities not talking and working together