The Canadian Wheat Board shipped 424,000 tonnes of western Canadian wheat through the Port of Churchill in the 2008 shipping season, slightly above usual levels.
“Despite very tight supplies of prairie grain during most of the Churchill shipping season, we were able to ship above normal volumes through Churchill,” said CWB president Ian White, adding that annual grain volume through the northern Manitoba port tends to hover at around 400,000 tonnes.
In the previous crop year, wheat supplies were drawn down to low levels as higher prices lured sellers into the market. In 2007 Churchill shipped the most grain in 30 years, at 621,000 tonnes.
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However, subsequent low stock levels on the Prairies left no opportunity for another consecutive year of record volumes at the northern port.
In total, 15 ocean vessels loaded grain in Churchill between August and late October this year bound for customers in Africa, Turkey and Europe.
This included two shiploads of grain for the United Kingdom on vessels that unloaded Russian fertilizer at Churchill, creating a two-way opportunity for a port where most grain ships arrive empty.
The Churchill Gateway Development Corp., a partnership comprising port and railway owners OmniTrax, the province of Manitoba and Western Economic Diversification, negotiated the fertilizer shipments.
The last ship left Chur-chill Oct. 20 carrying 24,000 tonnes of Canada Western Red Spring wheat to Sudan.
The CWB’s grain shipments account for 90 percent of all traffic through the port.
