LETHBRIDGE – The newest producer owned and controlled inland grain terminal has been open for three months and its bins are nearly brimming.
The Lethbridge Inland Terminal, a $23 million investment from 200 southern Alberta shareholders, is running 12 hours a day accepting mostly wheat and durum, said Norman Fodness, the terminal’s chief executive officer who was hired last November.
With 30 years in the grain trade, Fodness appreciates the new facility’s ability to act quickly as markets ebb and flow.
“This terminal is our head office for the company, so our ability to make decisions in a timely manner is a big one,” he said.
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Added board chair Darcy Heggie: “This is the office where things happen, not Winnipeg.”
The terminal was built with expansion in mind on more than 200 acres south of Lethbridge off Highway 4, part of a network of highways that link Alberta with Mexico. Canadian Pacific Railway runs parallel to the site.
The land base and location makes it ripe for a future agri-industrial business park.
“We are positioned to accommodate anything that comes our way in the future on this land base,” Heggie said.
“That is where the whole … highway structure, railway structure comes into play.”
The shareholders are farmers representing 1.5 million acres of cropland, but the doors are open to anyone with grain to sell.
“It’s up to the producers of southern Alberta to give us the first and last chance to buy their grain,” said Sean Stang, who has been involved in the project since the concept came off the drawing board several years ago.
It is the newest of the towering concrete facilities that replaced the traditional wooden elevators across the Prairies. While analysts feared too many terminals were built 10 years ago, Fodness said this was one part of the grain belt that was underserved.
The facility has been built to last 100 years and requires only computer upgrades for the future.
It is designed to handle bulk commodity cereal grain but can also take oilseeds and peas. As well, it can accept identity preserved deliveries to fill specific orders.
“We have a process set up in our computer system and in our sampling system that we have full traceability and we will become ISO-HACCP, which is a traceability system,” Fodness said.
“We are not there right now because we have only been operating a couple of months, but we have the whole system in place to do that. It is in our plan.”
The Canadian Wheat Board is asking for traceback because such a system gives it access to the European market or a potential miller that has a special identity preserved program.
The facility was built with farmer comfort in mind, considering the southern Alberta climate where westerly winds are a constant. Delivery doors were designed to close quickly behind the farmer as he unloads his truck and prevent the wind tunnel effect.
“You can see pounds off your truck move based on the wind. If you lose a couple hundred pounds of grain on every load, it starts to add up,” said Stang.
While this facility wants to deal directly with farmers, its board members are also mindful of the politics of the grain trade and how that may change some business approaches.
“It is a debate as to what happens with the Canadian Wheat Board and what happens with the Canadian grain industry in whole,” said Fodness.
“The biggest challenge the industry has is not the farmer or the production side, it is the regulatory bodies as to what they do with the railroads, or the wheat board or terminal position. The political side of it is the challenge. It is probably the group of people who have the least amount at stake in the business.”
