An official with the port of Vancouver says lingering logistical issues continue to hamper the fluid movement of Canadian grain to overseas markets, despite a significant increase in shipments last year.
Doug Mills, a senior account representative for bulk cargo at Port Metro Vancouver, said the number of ships waiting at anchor on the West Coast suggests that the grain industry still has logistical issues to solve.
Sixteen grain vessels were at anchor in Vancouver as of late last week, waiting to be loaded. Another nine ships were anchored off Vancouver Island. Most of those are also waiting for grain.
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Mills said the number of grain vessels waiting at port is not necessarily an indication of a bottleneck in the port’s loading capability.
“That’s not the issue,” he said. “The issue is that those vessels are waiting for grain to arrive. It’s actually a function of the grain industry’s ability to get specific grades of grain to the right place at the right time in order to meet the ship.”
Mills said the Canadian grain industry is still adjusting to logistical issues that arose when Ottawa ended Cab’s single desk marketing mandate two and half years ago.
Responsibility for co-ordinating the delivery of wheat at the port was transferred from one organization — CWB — to a number of private sector grain companies.
The result was more ships waiting at anchor, more cargoes broken into partial loads and more vessels docking multiple times at the same terminal before receiving their full tonnage.
“Our numbers indicate that we’re loading record amounts of grain,” Mills said.
“The terminals are not anywhere near their capacity, so these ships are simply waiting for grain to arrive.”
The number of grain vessels waiting at port this winter is significantly lower than it was 12 months ago: 20 to 25 ships waiting to be loaded at Vancouver last week compared to more than 50 grain vessels waiting at Vancouver and Prince Rupert early last year.
However, he said more work is needed.
“In general, I would say we still have some issues because that’s a lot of vessels to be waiting at anchor,” he said.
“And nine waiting off the island? I mean, the island is not a typical place to anchor. That is an emergency relief valve, if you like. When you have that number of ships at anchor off the island, it’s usually indicative of a problem for available space here at the harbour because they’re not waiting for locations on the island to load. They’re waiting to come here, and that alone is a signal that there’s still an issue.”
brian.cross@producer.com