A Montreal-based shipping and logistics company has plans to develop a new container transloading loading facility at the Port of Prince Rupert in northern British Columbia.
Ray-Mont Logistics will develop an “integrated logistics and container loading facility” that will handle Canadian pulses, cereal grains and other crops, according to a March 20 news release distributed by the Prince Rupert Port Authority.
The proposed facility, to be located on the south end of the port’s Ridley Island Industrial Site, will receive 100-car unit trains, unload them and fill export-bound shipping containers.
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Loui Stathatos, Ray-Mont’s vice-president and chief commercial officer, said increasing global demand for containerized Canadian grains — particularly in Asia and India — highlighted the need for additional transloading capacity on Canada’s West Coast.
Bulk crops will come from various points in Western Canada as well as Ontario and the U.S. Midwest, the news release sad.
Bulk cargoes will be transferred to ocean containers and loaded onto vessels via the Fairview Container Terminal, which is also being expanded.
“There’s quite a bit of product needed in Asia and around the world,” said Stathatos.
“The only (west coast) exit that we really had up until now in containerized business was through Vancouver … but that capacity was (stretched).
“We as a company weren’t able to meet the amount of demand that we had … because of the (capacity) limitations that we have in Vancouver.”
Ray-Mont has been operating in Canada since the 1990s.
It began with a transloading facility in Montreal but later established a presence on the West Coast to meet the growing demand for Canadian products in the Asia-Pacific region.
Ray-Mont’s existing trainload facility in Richmond, B.C., south of Vancouver has grown to 25 acres from about six acres just five years ago, Stathatos said.
However, even with the expansion at Richmond, throughput capacity is being maximized.
The Prince Rupert facility would expand Ray-Mont’s west coast transloading capacity significantly.
It would be able to unload a 100-car train every day.
Ray-Mont’s domestic customers include Canadian shippers and grain handling companies capitalizing on the growing demand for plant-based diets and alternative protein sources, Stathatos said.
“We’ve been asked by our customers to find solutions that will help our customers to be able to ship out more product,” he said.
“The opening of a transload facility in Prince Rupert … will give us a second corridor, a second export avenue on the West Coast.”
The 10-acre facility would include a 100-car loop track corridor and a state-of-the-art conveyance system.
Site work was set to begin this month and it could be operational in time for the 2017-18 crop this fall.
At full capacity, it will employ about 40 people.
Don Krusel, president of the Prince Rupert Port Authority, said the development is “another important step advancing the expansion of intermodal logistics services with our partners CN and DP World to meet the growing demand of Canadian exporters seeking to capitalize on the advantages of the Port of Prince Rupert in reaching their global markets.”
Prince Rupert’s Fairview Container Terminal is also being expanded to be able to handle about 1.3 million TEU containers per year, up from 850,000 TEUs currently.
The Fairview expansion is due for completion in August.
