Was it the best of years or the worst?
Whether the Port of Churchill had its best crop shipping season since the late 1970s depends on whether you are talking about overall crop volume, Canadian Wheat Board grain volume or nonboard grain volume.
At 621,000 tonnes, it was the best year for board grains since 1977.
But it was also the worst year for nonboard grains since 2002-03, when there was no nonboard business. This year there was also zero.
In 2006-07, more than 100,000 tonnes of nonboard grains, mainly special crops, passed through the port, with about the same amount the year before. In 2004-05, only about a third of that amount went through Churchill, but the volume in 2003-04 was above 100,000 tonnes.
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While 2007-08 will be the best board grains year since the 1970s, it is only the best year overall since 2000-01, in which combined board and nonboard tonnage slightly exceeded this year’s 621,000 tonnes.
At the end-of-shipping-year news conference in Winnipeg Nov. 5, officials from the province, the port and the wheat board lauded the year as a major success.
But they admitted that relying almost entirely on one customer, the wheat board, for almost all of its business isn’t great.
Officials were upbeat, saying long-term trends are offering economic opportunities that could expand the port’s usefulness.
“We’re not just looking at the wheat board,” said John Fenton, president of Omnitrax Inc., the company that owns the rail line to Churchill and its port.
“We’re looking at fertilizer. We’re looking at nonboard grain. We’re looking at other products we could bring into that port.”
This year a shipment of Russian fertilizer landed in Churchill, a coup for the port’s promoters who say finding backhauls for grain shipments is important in reducing shipping costs.
A number of officials pointed out that the lack of nonboard shipments this year doesn’t appear to be part of a trend, but simply an issue of where the markets were this shipping season. For wheat board grains, sales to Brazil and North Africa made Churchill a natural shipping choice.
But special crop markets this year were not in places naturally served by Churchill, so the lack of business isn’t surprising.
However, politicians and officials said making Churchill more attractive to pulses and special crops is essential.
“What we need is a way to handle containers,” said Manitoba agriculture minister Rosann Wowchuk.
“With all this new investment (from the federal government) hopefully there will be a way to handle containers.”
Lloyd Axworthy, who is chair of the Churchill Gateway Development Corp., said grain companies and the major railways may be ignoring Churchill because they do not own port facilities there, but there is growing demand for a port that can reach deep into central North America.
“One more hit on New Orleans and a large part of the U.S. transportation system gets severely affected,” said Axworthy.
“As food becomes such a crucial item, what we call a breadbasket is going to have to be working overtime.”
Manitoba transportation minister Ron Lemieux said he was hopeful that two-way traffic can reduce the port’s reliance on export grain.
“There’s a huge potential for countries that are looking, whether it’s China or Russia or India, at using Churchill as a gateway or portal through Manitoba into the heart of the United States,” said Lemieux.
As international transportation heats up and coastal ports become clogged, Churchill’s role might become more evident to those grain and railway companies that aren’t using it now.
“Somehow there’s been a winner-takes-all attitude here, but there’s enough business to go around,” Lemieux said.
