Francois Catellier is getting tired of hearing how the transportation backlog is slowing down exports of Canada’s major grains and oilseeds.
It’s a serious problem, he agrees, but it’s better than the situation for small and medium-sized exporters of Canada’s special crops. For them, the system has ground to a halt.
“In the short term we’re losing sales every day,” said the executive director of the Canadian Special Crops Association, representing dealers and exporters.
“For the Canadian Wheat Board it’s a timing issue but they know they’re going to sell those crops.
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“When you’re talking about processors and dealers of special crops, it’s a lost-sales thing and hits their bottom line much harder,” he said.
The transportation crisis is a challenge the newly formed Pulse Canada plans to meet head on, said chair Lyle Minogue after returning from a trade mission to Asia last week.
“The first thing people in Asia ask is ‘are we going to be able to get product when we want it,’ ” he said.
Traders are quoting prices based on June deliveries and that means lost sales, since countries such as the Philippines and Taiwan need small deliveries on short notice due to a lack of storage facilities.
Ability to deliver uncertain
“Most of these customers want just-in-time or almost just-in-time delivery,” he said, “but with this transport fiasco there’s no sense creating demand for a product if you can’t get it to market.”
Several of the association’s 40 dealer and exporter members say their business is crawling at a time of year when it’s usually booming.
Established this month, Pulse Canada said it wants a seat around the table with government and industry players to get the situation resolved.
Al Slinkard, a pulse crop researcher with the University of Saskatchewan’s crop development centre, said the pulse industry doesn’t have “the weight or club over the transportation industry that a much bigger entity like wheat and the wheat board have.”
A survey carried out in early March by the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers found 68 pulse crop processors were waiting for 746 rail cars. The average wait for a car this winter has been 29 days, compared to 11 days in previous years, according to executive director Garth Patterson.
If Saskatchewan’s pulse plantings increase as expected to 1.96 million acres in 1997, the transport problem will stifle an industry with incredible growth potential, he said.
Pulse Canada chair Gordon Cresswell said regardless of deregulation, the federal government should step in to facilitate discussions among all stakeholders.
