A proposal to build an inland port in Saskatchewan was well received by the steamship line, port and railway representatives who heard a presentation on the subject in Vancouver last week, say project proponents.
“It went off tickety-boo,” said Red Williams, president of Saskatchewan Agrivision Corporation Inc.
“There was a general agreement that we move ahead.”
An eight-person steering committee has been formed to guide the project, with the objective of launching a funding drive for a business plan in July.
Senior representatives from two of Canada’s four major ports and two of the country’s biggest steamship lines will be on the advisory committee, with the remaining four spots filled by other players in the logistics chain.
Read Also
Canola oil transloading facility opens
DP World just opened its new canola oil transload facility at the Port of Vancouver. It can ship one million tonnes of the commodity per year.
“We’ll have to move now from a business concept to a business plan. We’ll have to see what the actual dollars and cents are,” said Williams.
Saskatchewan Agrivision executive director Al Scholz said between now and July they will be contacting those players in the transportation industry who didn’t attend the Jan. 16 meeting.
They will also use the time to develop a plan and budget for the business plan phase of the inland container project.
While the concept remains vague, what is being proposed initially is a Saskatchewan-based intelligence system that will track the movement of rail traffic and assist in preparing bonding and import/export clearance documents for product moving to and from the United States to the West Coast.
The goal is to bring more containers into Saskatchewan and decrease congestion at the West Coast. Scholz said the system will make use of existing assets in Moose Jaw, Regina and Saskatoon.
Eventually the project will expand to include the construction of Saskatchewan-based handling facilities to assist in the transloading and rerouting of rail traffic heading to and from the U.S.
This isn’t Saskatchewan Agrivision’s first crack at streamlining grain transportation.
“We worked on getting pulse crops out of the province four years ago and had a plan but it didn’t work,” said Williams.
The group learned from that failed venture that there needs to be a Canada-wide rather than made-in-Saskatchewan solution to the container supply problem that has plagued the pulse industry and other prairie shippers.
This time around they assembled an advisory group early in the process and plan to keep the major players in the transportation industry abreast of how the project is proceeding.
One of those players had a rather restrained response to what they heard in Vancouver. CN Rail spokesperson Jim Feeny said the company didn’t have any thoughts on the project, one way or the other.
“Not until we’ve had a closer look at the economics and the logistics behind it,” he said.
Feeny also declined to share his thoughts on the need for such an inland co-ordination service.
“I don’t think that’s really for CN to say. It would be more for the people that are using it,” he said.
Williams said there is a dire and growing need for such a service, noting that the latest ships are capable of carrying 14,000 containers. It would require 70 double-stacked 100-car trainloads to fill such a vessel.
“You get some idea of the impact when a ship hits,” he said.
