“Canada’s 1st Free Trade Zone” by Nigel Fortlage, Vice President of Information Technology, GHY International

Nov 10, 2010 | Corporate Member News

CentrePort Canada is North America’s new 20,000-acre inland port that has been designated Canada’s first Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ). Located in Manitoba next to Winnipeg’s James Armstrong Richardson International Airport, CentrePort Canada offers greenfield investment opportunities for a wide variety of business operations including distribution, warehousing and manufacturing.

CentrePort Canada – Better Faster Cheaper

CentrePort Canada is North America’s new 20,000-acre inland port that has been designated Canada’s first Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ). Located in Manitoba next to Winnipeg’s James Armstrong Richardson International Airport, CentrePort Canada offers greenfield investment opportunities for a wide variety of business operations including distribution, warehousing and manufacturing.

CentrePort Canada is strategically located in the central time zone in the heart of North America. It boasts a modern, well-established network of highways, railways, air and sea connections to important regional and international markets, including eastern and western Canada, the United States, Mexico and Latin America, as well as Europe and Asia.

As an FTZ, CentrePort Canada has significant tax and cost savings to offer foreign investors and businesses looking for new ways to bring their products to the North American marketplace. FTZ benefits include deferral of customs duties and a GST exemption on products imported to Canada for warehousing or processing before re-export out of country.

CentrePort Canada features an impressive collection of transportation assets that are unmatched anywhere in the region and provide businesses with real advantages such as: 

  • Flying through Winnipeg is cheaper than flying into U.S. destinations; airlines landing in Winnipeg can cycle their aircraft faster and more time in the air increases revenue; and international cargo flights are exempt from provincial fuel tax.
  • Winnipeg is home to one of Canada’s top cargo airports, has more than 1,000 for-hire trucking companies, is at the junction of three major continental railways (CN, CP and BNSF), and is closer to European and Asian markets via the polar routes.
  • Winnipeg offers great road, rail and air connections to North America – in fact, many major U.S. and Canadian cities are less than 24 hours away by truck.

Winnipeg also boasts extremely competitive business costs including affordable office space and land, low construction costs and hydro-electric energy rates that are among the lowest in North America.  Winnipeg’s taxes are also lower than those of most major cities in Canada and the U.S.  In fact, Winnipeg has a lower effective Corporate Income Tax Rate and a lower Total Effective Tax Rate than 58 of 59 major U.S. cities, according to a recent KPMG study.

All of these advantages mean that it is more efficient and cost-effective for international businesses to ship North American-bound goods through Winnipeg.

To find out how CentrePort Canada can work for you, email us at [email protected] or telephone 1-204-784-1300.

About Nigel Fortlage and this article: 

Nigel is the Vice President of Information Technology at GHY International. Nigel has been with GHY International since 1988; formerly he was an in house customs broker for a large western Canadian manufacture/wholesaler. He can be found on Twitter at @infortlage.

This article originally appeared in GHY International’s Trade Compliance Strategies Blog.

Excerpt from the Blog’s Introduction:

The world has gone global, have you?

Manufactures world wide are going to global supply chains and this is putting pressure on organizations to get trade right. Our premise is that in today’s world it makes sense for organizations to consider an integrated trade compliance strategy. The details will be unpacked as we make our case why this strategy makes sense in light of today’s changing international trade dynamics.

Our aim is to guide, educate, and help you understand the journey to compliance. Although many of the authors of this site are leaders at GHY International, the intent here is not to sell you on GHY’s products and services, but to engage in a conversation without fear of selling. In other words we know we can be more than a customs broker, on this site our desire is to share good advice that we suspect you aren’t getting elsewhere, and in doing so we hope to create a dialogue on how this issue may be affecting your organization and what you can do about it.

It’s a great read. Click here to access the Blog.

To find our more about GHY International visit its website here.

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