LETHBRIDGE – Canadian National Railway is building an inland transload facility designed to ease congestion on the West Coast and help address the chronic container shortage on the Prairies.
CN’s Edmonton grain distribution centre will take specialized commodities from rail cars and trucks and stuff them into container cars for shipment to Asia.
It will make use of the 12,000 empty container cars the railway annually ships from Edmonton to Vancouver, a waste of space considering special crops shippers are clamouring to get their hands on empty containers.
Read Also
Manitoba extends Crown land rent freeze
Manitoba government links the continued rental rate freeze on grazing and forage leases to economic and environmental challenges facing the industry
“We think there is an opportunity to reverse some of this and take advantage of that available capacity,” said Wayne Atamanchuk, assistant vice-president of marketing bulk products at CN Rail.
CN’s new transload facility is expected to cost $3-$5 million to build and should be operational in September or October. It will be capable of handling 20 and 40 foot containers.
Atamanchuk, who unveiled CN’s plans at the Canadian Special Crops Association’s annual convention, said the facility will initially ship out 6,000 containers per year, but will have the capacity to stuff 20,000 metal boxes.
He expects most of the grain to come from the Edmonton region but the company will be developing bulk rail car rates for select Saskatchewan origins as well. He doubts that it will prove economical to ship product by truck from the neighbouring province.
The Edmonton transload facility will be a small step toward resolving what has become a container crisis in the special crops industry.
A report written by Quorum Corp., Canada’s government-appointed grain transportation monitor, has identified more than 50 constraints facing special crops shippers. Most of those issues can be condensed into one overriding factor – a shortage of container cars.
“That’s the problem we’re dealing with today in short,” said Quorum president Mark Hemmes.
Top concern
Murad Al-Katib, chair of the CSCA’s transportation committee, said the container issue is the association’s No. 1 issue, which is why the topic usurped more than half of the annual meeting in Lethbridge.
The best illustration of how bad things have become is contained in a recent red lentil benchmarking study.
“Canada was ranked as the least preferred origin for red lentils amongst all origins,” said Al-Katib.
The low ranking is due to the country’s international reputation as an unreliable supplier.
But Al-Katib and others in the special crops industry are confident the container problem is slowly being addressed. One positive sign is that both national railways sent representatives to speak at the CSCA’s annual convention, an unprecedented move.
Special crops now account for eight percent of CP Rail’s and 10 percent of CN Rail’s total grain movement, a sizable volume of product that has both companies fully engaged in talks about how to resolve the container dilemma.
There are also encouraging developments at both of Canada’s West Coast ports that should help reduce container congestion for Asian-bound cargo.
The Port of Vancouver has embarked on a container expansion program that will see its handling capacity grow to 5.4 million 20-foot-equivalent-units or TEUs by 2020, up from 2.4 million TEUs in 2006.
The Prince Rupert Port Authority hopes phase 1 of its $170 million container terminal project will be operational by September 2007. When it is complete in 2010, the terminal will add two million TEUs to West Coast capacity.
Al-Katib said shippers also need to contribute to the solution. They have to figure out how to fit in better with the existing practices of the railways and steamship lines, such as making better use of 40 foot containers and spreading out demand beyond the busy fall months.
“We have to create year-round markets to even out the seasonal peaks and valleys,” he said.
