Revamping the grain industry’s “supply chain” to meet future needs is easily possible if all the links commit themselves to it, says a major Great Lakes grain shipper.
But it can only happen if participants bite the bullet, scrap old assumptions and embrace the need for change, said Gerald Carter, a Canada Steamship Lines vice-president.
“I think all the solutions are there,” Carter said during the Fields on Wheels conference held in Winnipeg Nov. 20.
CSL runs ships on the Great Lakes that take prairie grain from Thunder Bay and other locations to large salt water ships headed overseas.
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During the conference, speakers and audience members discussed whether it was possible to introduce an effective identity-preserved grain transportation system that was affordable and could exist beside the present bulk commodity system.
Others focused on making the controversy-plagued system run more quickly, efficiently and cheaply.
“I know it can be done,” Carter said. “I know the system can be made more efficient in a very short period of time if you want to spend the time and the effort to do it.”
He said many grain and food industry players may not want to shake up the present system because its problems aren’t too large. But he said these players need to look down the road.
That’s what his company did when it brought its workers on side to rebuild its fleet and restructure operations. His company can serve as an example of what the rest of the chain needs to do, he said.
“I told (the union president) that if we didn’t do this, we’d both be out of jobs in 10 years,” Carter said in an interview.
CSL convinced its biggest union, which had a reputation for militancy, to rework agreements so new ships could have smaller crews with new skills.
Carter said the union at first thought CSL wanted to cut jobs and weaken worker conditions. So Carter started bringing the union president to management meetings and began sharing the private company’s financial reports with him.
“I invested a lot of time in trying to get them to understand our business, trying to get them to understand that making us more efficient provides jobs for them,” Carter said.
“Today, we’ve spent $200 million building four new ships. Those four new ships will have sailors for the next 25 years.”
