At this point, the Port of Montreal can handle 2.1 million containers, but that's a theoretical number, because the reality is that, at an 85% utilization rate, our capacity is closer to 1.73 million containers. The closer we get to that peak, the less competitive we are. To simplify, I would say that there are times when there's lots of space and times when we have to turn customers away and send them elsewhere. That volume is spread out over a whole year, and some seasons are busier than others. That happened in 2019, when we had more difficult seasons. Anyone in import-export will tell you that.
Thanks to these investments, especially in digitization—which I consider very important—and optimization, we're able to reduce costs and our carbon footprint. At the end of the day, we're making the port more competitive and, more importantly, there's a multiplier effect on the products we ship out. The Port of Montreal primarily serves Europe, which is still very interested in low-carbon products, but it also serves Asia, to which we export 25% of our volume, and it is increasingly serving Africa, as you can see. Those are essentially the needs we are going to meet.
Capacity limits relate directly to the principle of supply and demand. The more capacity you have in a system, the more companies can take advantage of it and do business internationally with fewer logistical barriers. Again, that creates jobs here.