NAICS 4831Industry group · 4-digitinternational market1 market record

Deep sea, coastal and Great Lakes water transportation

SoftwareMaritime & Port Operations Software 483

This industry group comprises establishments primarily engaged in deep sea, coastal and Great Lakes water transportation of freight and passengers. The St. Lawrence Seaway is considered to be part of the Great Lakes system. Establishments that operate ocean-going cruise ships are included. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 192
Under 10 employeesA: 43%
Establishments · USA: 1,095
Employment · USA: 41,179
Payroll · USA: $4.4B

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–44523%

5–93820%

10–192815%

20–492815%

50–992714%

100–199158%

200–49984%

500+32%

Of 192 Canadian establishments with employees, 43% have fewer than ten — an industry where large establishments carry real weight.

Where they areA

British Columbia6433%

Quebec4222%

Ontario3418%

Newfoundland and Labrador2413%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Transportation and Warehousing, US · opened 2020

84.1%

1 year

67.4%

3 years

52.7%

5 years

36.1%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 483, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

international competitionhigh capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 483 Water transportation

Vessel capital and cabotage rules. Coastal, ferry and tug-and-barge operations are regional and occasionally reachable.

Who sets the price: Global freight rates; regulated tariffs on ferries.
The software it runs on: Vessel operations, port and terminal systems.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Operating businessScreened

Coastal & Great Lakes ShippingStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

Deep-sea shipping is priced on global freight indices and flagged offshore; nobody enters it from a Canadian start. What is reachable is domestic: cabotage law reserves Canadian coastal and Great Lakes trades for Canadian-flagged vessels unless none is available, so the competition is a short list, and cargoes — grain, ore, salt, aggregates, fuel — move under multi-year contracts. British Columbia (64) and Newfoundland (24) hold a large share of the 192 establishments [A], which is the tug-and-barge and coastal-ferry end. The cut is the hull. Algoma Central, the listed Great Lakes operator, earned C$761M of revenue and C$231M of EBITDA in 2025 [A] — a good business — and to keep it took delivery of five newbuilds in the year with twelve more under construction [A]. That is the steady state: a fleet is always being replaced, each unit is a purpose-built ship ordered years ahead, and the protected trade that makes the revenue dependable also means a vessel built for it has no second market if the contract is lost. Contracts are awarded to the carrier that already has the tonnage; an entrant must commit to the ship to bid for the cargo. Ferries in this code are mostly Crown or provincially contracted routes and are a buyer rather than a market. A small coastal tug, water-taxi or landing-craft service is genuinely startable, but that is a boat-and-skipper livelihood and was not sized here. Maritime software is screened separately.

NAICS 48315 vendors named11 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 483 Water transportation

Maritime & Port Operations SoftwareStructure decides

binding constraint: entry cost

Incumbent Kaleris (Navis) and Veson Nautical

A terminal operating system runs cranes and yard equipment in real time and a failure stops the port, so nobody buys one from a new vendor — the reference requirement is absolute. The chartering and voyage side is a closed data business where Veson's value is the contract and fixture history it has accumulated rather than the software around it. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.

NAICS 4837 vendors named3 sourced figuresOpen →

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Companies in this industry · 9

Every company this research names that is filed here or beneath — the operators, and the vendors that sell to them — largest disclosed revenue first. The rank is within the company’s own six-digit industry.

Company	Filed under	Revenue	Rank
Algoma CentralTSX:ALC	Deep sea, coastal and Great Lakes water transportation4831	$761M	1/9
Seaspan ULCPrivate	Deep sea, coastal and Great Lakes water transportation4831	—	2/9
BC FerriesPrivate	Deep sea, coastal and Great Lakes water transportation4831	—	3/9
CSL GroupPrivate	Deep sea, coastal and Great Lakes water transportation4831	—	4/9
DesgagnésPrivate	Deep sea, coastal and Great Lakes water transportation4831	—	5/9
FednavPrivate	Deep sea, coastal and Great Lakes water transportation4831	—	6/9
Marine AtlanticPrivate	Deep sea, coastal and Great Lakes water transportation4831	—	7/9
OceanexPrivate	Deep sea, coastal and Great Lakes water transportation4831	—	8/9
provincial ferry authoritiesPrivate	Deep sea, coastal and Great Lakes water transportation4831	—	9/9

Who works here

The occupations employed in Transportation and warehousing, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Mail and message distribution occupations One industry 90.8%

Train crew operating occupations One industry 90.7%

Transportation officers and controllers One industry 75.7%

Transport truck and transit drivers Mostly one sector 65.4%

Managers in transportation and postal and courier services Mostly one sector 63.9%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 57.7%

Contractors and supervisors, technical maintenance trades and heavy equipment and transport operators Mostly one sector 22.6%

Water and rail transport operators and labourers and related occupations Mostly one sector 11.4%

Automotive service technicians Mostly one sector 9.1%

Crane operators and water well drillers Mostly one sector 6.6%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 13.9%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 5.8%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 5.1%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 5%

Technical inspectors and regulatory officers Across the economy 3.9%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 3.7%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 3.3%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 3.1%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 2.7%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 2.7%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

1 row sits directly beneath 4831, and 3 in all once every level is counted. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
48311	Deep sea, coastal and Great Lakes water transportation	192	screened at 4831

Alongside it, under 483 Water transportation

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
4832	Inland water transportation	103	River & Harbour Vessel Operator