The CWB would consider buying grain handling facilities to help market western Canadian grain.
But asset buying is not likely in the next few months, said company officials last week.
“One of the options that we have in the new environment is for the CWB to purchase assets like grain elevators,” said CWB vice-president Gord Flaten.
“That’s something that (has) … potential but not something that we’ll likely do this winter.”
Asked whether the board would consider setting up a network of rural grading stations and bulk handling facilities similar to what exists in Australia, CWB president Ian White said it would look at all opportunities aimed at helping farmers market their grain and improving delivery options.
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“The Australian experience is a little different to what we have here, but there’s no question that farmers really like to understand what their grain is grading and what it’s worth and sometimes they like to have an independent company doing that,” White said.
“We (will) look at how we develop the company into the future and what opportunities there are for us to store grain, take large deliveries and then to move it later on…. We’ll be looking at all opportunities to help farmers out and to provide the best delivery opportunities for them.”
White also offered a sneak peek into what form the CWB might take when privatization occurs in a few years.
CWB officials prefer a business model that would include farmers as significant shareholders, he said.
“Certainly we believe there’s a place for a farmer-owned or farmer-focused company in the Canadian prairie landscape once again and we’ll be certainly looking (at) … how we might affect that and what sort of process we have to go through to get to that,” he said.
“We’ll be talking to farmers a lot about (this) when we come up with what that plan actually looks like, (but) our plan is not to have the CWB bought out by a grain company.… Our plan is to find ways of … having farmers as shareholders and maybe some other companies as shareholders as well, and looking for sources of capital.”
White said access to capital will be critical to the company’s viability.
“We realize that we’re going to have to develop the business to be successful in the future and that probably means owning some level of storage and throughput capacity ourselves,” he said.
“To develop a grain company these days, it takes a lot of capital, so we’ll be looking at how we access capital and what we’ve got to do to be successful going forward.”
White also said farmers could expect an announcement about CWB expanding its marketing programs to include pulse crops.
“There’s no question that that’s something that we’ll be looking at in the future,” White said.
