After two years of COVID chaos, local transportation providers are finding creative detours through the tangled supply chain

Compared to the bustle of the Halifax waterfront on a sunny summer afternoon—gangs of children playing with bubbles, German-speaking tourists making their way toward the cruise ship terminal, trucks trundling their way up marginal road—the quiet inside the PIER, where a handful of people work quietly at desks, feels like an oasis of calm.

Except that in its own way, this space is dealing with chaos, too.

PIER, or Port Innovation, Engagement and Research, is a living lab for partners working on challenges in the transportation sector—including the challenge that has been causing headaches for consumers and producers alike: our intractably snarled supply chain.

Before March 2020, the Port of Halifax had been planning—press releases in hand, interest from international providers piqued—to use this space to have an independent operator run an urban market hall during the week, in addition to the weekend Seaport farmers’ market. Then the pandemic hit.

“That just leveled everything,” said Lane Farguson director of communications and marketing at Port of Halifax, standing in front of a panel stylized to look like the side of a shipping container, in the PIER’s entrance.

But the Port adapted; the farmers’ market moved to Pier 22, then Pier 23, and the newly available space at the Seaport building was repurposed into a space for the PIER.

It’s perhaps fitting that a space dedicated to investigating challenges in the supply chain has been shaped by the pandemic, because the pandemic has radically reshaped the global supply chain itself. For companies in Atlantic Canada, the long-term implications are still uncertain, but one thing is clear: the supply chain needs to take a more central role in how we think about our world.

 

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