Just like the television game show, “the price was right” for the sale of Great Northern Grain Terminal’s Nampa facility to grain giant Richardson International.
Bruce Horner, chief executive officer of Great Northern Grain, said Richardson would likely have built its own terminal down the road if the smaller company didn’t sell, which would have been just one more competitor for the independently owned and operated grain terminal in Alberta’s Peace River region. Cargill is already building a facility at nearby McLennan.
To remain competitive, Great Northern needed to build more storage, which meant borrowing money.
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“We didn’t want to borrow more money. We’re in our 60s,” Horner said about him and his partners.
It takes big money to build more storage and “play the game,” he added.
“We wished we could have kept at it and had it running for 150 years,” said Horner.
Great Northern still operates a terminal in Killam, southeast of Edmonton, and will stay involved in its network of producer and dealer cars. With changes to the Canadian Wheat Board, Horner believes there may be opportunities on the producer car and marketing side of the business.
The sale to Richardson is expected to close by Feb. 9.
Winnipeg-based Richardson’s has invested more than $80 million in the Peace River region since 2007. The company bought crop input centres in Manning, Falher and Fairview in 2010 and is putting the final touches on a 20,000-tonne fertilizer storage shed at Rycroft.
Richardson said it would add 14,000 tonnes of grain storage to the Nampa facility, add fertilizer blending facilities and double the rail car spot from 52 to 104 cars.
“The Nampa facility will now give us presence in both the eastern and western parts of the region and we look forward to providing greater service to customers,” Darwin Sobkow, vice-president of agri-business operations for Richardson, said in a news release.
