Thousands of empty marine containers travel on rail cars through Saskatchewan every year, yet many small processors have a tough time getting a handful of the metal boxes delivered to their plants.
It’s a conundrum that a coalition of provincial farm and business leaders has decided to tackle.
Saskatchewan Agrivision Corp. Inc. says the problem is that owners of the containers don’t like dropping them off in the province if it takes too long to fill them up.
“The steamship lines would just as soon send them back to Asia empty than have them sit around for a while or haul low value commodities,” said Al Scholz Saskatchewan Agrivision’s executive director.
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Containers have become a popular way for processors to transport pulses and organic crops out of the province, but container supply has been inconsistent.
That’s why Saskatchewan Agrivision launched a container pilot project on Oct. 1 that will try to put some of the empty containers to use in Saskatchewan.
Agrivision is a broad-based coalition of farm and business groups trying to increase farmgate revenues by promoting things such as value-added processing.
David Spearin, president of Logistics Marketing Services Inc., prepared a feasibility report on the pilot program.
“A crucial element for the project is to minimize the time a container sits idle in the province,” Spearin wrote in the report’s executive summary.
The pilot project is intended to better co-ordinate container placement in the province, cutting the amount of time boxes sit idle.
Spearin said accurate forecasts of container traffic are not making their way back to shipping lines, which is preventing them from offering an adequate supply of cars for processors.
“What the pilot project brings to the participating Saskatchewan producers is a reliable and consistent container supply, a reliable and consistent schedule for rail and ocean movement and an enhanced level of customer service throughout the entire process.”
Canadian Pacific Railway, the ports of Montreal and Vancouver, a freight forwarder and three shipping lines have committed to work with the pilot project.
It is open to any processor interested in shipping product by container, but the primary target is small pulse processing plants. Scholz said interested parties should contact Agrivision (www.agrivision.sk.ca) for details.
There is no fee to participate, but processors will need to provide a 60-day forecast of their container needs. No firm commitment will be made until 30 days before the requested delivery date.
Between 15 and 30 percent of Saskatchewan pulse shipments move by container, depending on the commodity. Last year 13,946 containers were used to ship lentils, peas and chickpeas and Spearin expects it to double by 2005 as pulse acreage expands.
Containers were in particularly short supply in previous years when the rail transportation system was under stress.
In theory, access shouldn’t be a problem.
Spearin’s feasibility study shows that in addition to the thousands of containers sitting at CPR and Canadian National Railway container terminals in the province, an estimated 16,000 empty containers roll through Saskatchewan each year on the way to the port of Vancouver.
Francis Gaudet, owner of Belle Pulses Ltd., a special crops processor in Bellevue, Sask., is one of five processors who expressed an interest in participating in the container pilot project.
He can’t understand why some of those empty containers can’t be loaded with product on their way to the West Coast.
“Why don’t we fill them up and ship them to these final destinations instead of going intermodel or by boxcar?”
Gaudet said it’s too early to know if the pilot project can address that dilemma, but he’s willing to give it a try.
Scholz said all parties have committed to a six-month trial. The project could be extended if it proves to be a useful way to improve access to marine containers.
