It’s going to be another quiet summer at the big grain terminal at Prince Rupert.
For the third year in a row, and fourth in the last five, the grain shipping program at the northern B.C. port has come to an early halt.
The last rail cars destined to Prince Rupert Grain (PRG) this crop year were shipped off the Prairies at the end of May. The next ones won’t arrive until the new crop has been harvested.
Canadian Wheat Board spokesperson Jim Pietryk said that given the size of this year’s sales program, it should come as no surprise that the Prince Rupert program has been wound down. The board is ahead of its grain shipping targets and only about 15 percent of the crop remains to be shipped by the end of the crop year.
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“Everything has moved so well without interruption this year that we can accommodate it all through Vancouver,” said Pietryk.
Other factors include the lower freight rate to Vancouver and the fact that the major grain handling companies prefer to move grain through their wholly-owned terminals at Vancouver as opposed to the jointly-owned PRG facility.
“Everyone knew that it would come,” he said. “It was just a matter of when.”
Volumes at PRG are up substantially this year, with receipts expected to total about 3.3 million tonnes, up from about 1.7 million in 1998-99.
PRG general manager Jeff Burghardt agrees it makes sense to move remaining grain through Vancouver.
“There’s just not enough grain to keep all the west coast facilities going,” he said.
There is no indication when rail shipments to Prince Rupert will resume, but the prairie grain crop is about 10 days ahead of normal so the shutdown may not last as long as in previous years.
“We’re expecting some of the harvesting to start in August, so we could have a new crop in place to move by mid-September,” said Pietryk.
However, Burghardt said the 2000-01 export forecasts are not all that promising and the terminal could face a similar situation a year from now.
The 210,000 tonne capacity terminal was opened in 1985. Shipments have averaged 3.7 million tonnes over the past five years, with a high of 5.3 million tonnes in 1991-92 and a low of 1.7 million tonnes last year.
