WINNIPEG – After years of languishing as Canada’s residual export outlet for grain, the Port of Thunder Bay is carving a new niche for itself as a handler of special crops.
Director of marketing Paul Kennedy said the surge in different crops grown on the Prairies is giving the 10 terminals, lining 21 kilometres of waterfront, a new lease on life.
For years the port authority, terminal operators and their unionized workforce have lamented changing export trends which resulted in most export wheat and barley moving through west coast facilities.
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The cost of transporting grain through the St. Lawrence Seaway, the move to large ocean-going vessels and customer preferences pushed Canadian Wheat Board shipments through Thunder Bay to a 30-year low last year.
That’s not about to change. “I see no increase this year of the amount of wheat and barley going through the port to export,” Kennedy said.
But with its huge storage and handling capabilities, Thunder Bay is well-suited to handle the wide range of commodities, grades and specifications rolling off the Prairies these days, Kennedy said.
The customers are diversified too, and interested in smaller shipments.
That has helped fuel a surge in ocean-going vessels coming to the port to collect shipments of bagged peas, lentils and bulk shipments of flax, canola and peas.
The port’s grain shipments reached 6.2 million tonnes by the end of September, up by more than one million tonnes over the same period last year. Kennedy said Thunder Bay could handle over 10 million tonnes by the end of 1994.
Increased handling and segregation, required because of the wide mix of commodities, have raised terminal operators’ costs of production, said Kennedy, but it is better than having nothing to do.
More people needed
“We’ve had people called back who hadn’t worked in 18 months to two years.”
It’s also resulting in more co-operation between terminal operators in an effort to improve the system’s overall handling efficiency.
In early October, operators began an experimental program of pooling rail cars carrying No. 1 uncleaned canola. In the past, canola cars were delivered to a specific terminal for unload.
Now cars belonging to the various companies will be unloaded at the first terminal that has room, freeing up the railcar to move back to the Prairies.
