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Thunder Bay harbour has taken on the look of a parking lot this year.
With last year’s backlog of wheat still being pushed through the western Lake Superior port, it’s not common to see a half-dozen freighters riding at anchor waiting their turn for cargo at the waterfront grain elevators.
The calendar had barely turned the page to November when the port authority announced it had already surpassed last year’s tonnage totals.
The authority measured 6.3 million tonnes pushed through the waterfront grain elevators, almost a million more than last year’s final totals.
As of October 31, grain shipments were reported to be 73 per cent higher than the same time last year.
For the sixth consecutive month, grain shipments of wheat and canola hit a monthly 17-year high with more than 850,000 tonnes shipped.
“We’re still predicting about eight million (tonnes) in grain,” said port authority CEO Tim Heney, in making his year-end forecast over the final two months as the Great Lakes shipping season draws to a close.
Much of those swollen totals can be attributed to last year’s bumper grain crop on the Western Canadian prairies.
In an average year, Heney said, the previous year’s crop clears the port by late summer, but this fall Thunder Bay elevators were simultaneously handling the remainder of last year’s crop, plus this year’s more modest, but still healthy, harvest.
Last spring, the huge crop caught many grain haulers and rail carriers off-guard, and was exacerbated by a severe winter which hampered the movement of grain to port. It prompted the federal government to order the railways to move grain faster or face stiff fines on a weekly basis.
“There are still some delays,” said Heney, “but overall Thunder Bay benefitted from the (federal) orders to move it. It was the easiest place (for shippers) to go to comply.”
The high volumes presented a great opportunity to showcase the port, Heney said, but they’ve been very fortunate that potential strikes with local grain handlers’ and St. Lawrence Seaway workers were averted this fall.
“All that’s settled and we get to carry on with those big numbers.”
Various changes and events in the grain sector over the past two years have worked out for the better for Thunder Bay, beginning with the decision by Ottawa in 2012 to end the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly, which focused plenty of attention on the port’s considerable 1.2 million tonnes of elevator capacity.
Earlier the same year, Richardson International purchased a mothballed elevator on the waterfront and “have been running it flat out ever since,” said Heney.
Then, one of the worst Canadian winters in recent memory combined with the one of the latest openings of the port’s, due to an ice-clogged Lake Superior, followed by the federal legislation for railway movement have “contributed to give to us the situation we’re in now.”
The authority counts 98 more vessel calls this year than in 2013, especially by foreign vessel arrivals, so-called “salties,” which are up 72 per cent.
Heney said the high volume of grain has meant more maintenance work for local contractors in the elevators, more grain inspectors being hired, and more overtime pay for all grain workers, as well as generated more interest in the port by grain haulers.
“It’s all been a real positive thing.”
