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Canadian National Railway Co. hasn’t opened its new Port of Prince Rupert container terminal yet, but the Class I already has lined up the first steamship customer.

Yesterday, the railroad announced it obtained a contract from COSCO Container Lines Americas Inc. to route Asian export container freight to the British Columbia terminal, which is scheduled to open in fall. COSCO will begin shipping freight to the $17 million facility in the fourth quarter.

Featuring a transload center, the terminal will have an initial capacity to handle 500,000 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs). CN plans to expand the terminal to handle 2 million TEUs.

The facility will “inject meaningful port-rail-terminal capacity into the global supply chain, and offer shippers the fastest, most efficient and most cost-effective routing for Asian traffic destined to and from the interior of North America,” said CN Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing James Foote in a prepared statement.