Two new transportation reports offer conflicting views on a Saskatchewan proposal for an inland container port.
A paper on the Asia Pacific Gateway project prepared for international trade minister David Emerson endorses the idea.
“Besides relieving port congestion, inland terminals create employment and economic opportunities elsewhere in the country,” it said.
The authors go on to state that inland terminals would give shippers enhanced access to unit trains and empty containers.
However, a report on container use in Western Canada by Quorum Corp. came to the opposite conclusion.
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Quorum, which is the government appointed monitor of the prairie grain handling and transportation system, said an inland container terminal requires a high volume of traffic to be financially self-sufficient, and there are no obvious locations where such a facility could be built on the Prairies without requiring the closure of existing railway intermodel facilities.
“The support and participation of railways and shipping lines in the development of such a facility is a precondition of its success and as such, the prospect for the construction of such new facilities in Western Canada in the immediate term is very low,” the report said.
Saskatchewan Agrivision has taken the lead role in a proposal to build an inland port in the province with a goal of bringing more empty containers into Saskatchewan, filling them with product and taking pressure off congested transload facilities in Vancouver.
However, such a facility would require the full support of shippers, shipping lines that own the containers and the railways that transport them.
Quorum president Mark Hemmes, who wrote the report, spoke to “dozens and dozens” of transportation industry officials and said they have serious reservations about such a project.
“They’re all saying that we haven’t used up the capacity that we’ve got,” Hemmes said.
Saskatchewan already has three “really good” intermodel terminals, he added: two in Saskatoon and one in Regina.
“The idea of building a third intermodel terminal (in Saskatoon) has a lot of shippers perplexed, saying, ‘we’re having a hard time making the ones that we’ve got work. Why would we add a third one?’ “
Saskatchewan Agrivision president Red Williams said the Quorum report is well written and provides many valuable insights into container movement in Western Canada.
For instance, the report said trade values increased an average of three percent a year between 2002 and 2006, while container volumes grew by seven percent a year over that same period.
It noted that 57 percent of container exports from Canada are transloaded at port and there is a recent trend by shipping lines to boost that number. Some lines have stopped sending containers inland. Others have increased the cost of inland movements.
As well, the report determined that there is no shortage of available empty containers in Western Canada, with the exception of 20-foot containers in Saskatchewan.
Williams said while the information in the report is solid, the conclusions it draws are suspect because of the chronic container shortages in Saskatchewan that shipping lines and railways are not adequately addressing.
“We can’t do nothing,” Williams said. “We must develop an efficient way of handling containers in this province so we’ve got adequate numbers in a timely manner or we can’t go forward with our value-added industry.”
Agrivision’s answer is an inland port that co-ordinates the movement of the metal boxes using existing infrastructure and whatever additional resources are required.
“We’re working on the assumption that we can take loaded containers off the West Coast, unstuff in Saskatchewan, restuff and get back in Vancouver faster than the transload (facilities) at port,” Williams said.
