WASHINGTON: Thunder Bay’s port appears bound to finish the year on another high note thanks to grain shipments headed for European and other global ports.
“The western Canadian grain harvest has begun reaching port earlier than usual this fall, and rail-car unloads at the port’s grain elevators are increasing,” a Thunder Bay Port Authority news release said Monday.
The port authority “anticipates a strong October” in terms of shipments, the release added. In all last month, 850,000 tonnes of grain was loaded onto ships, nearly 30 per cent higher than the five-year average for September.
Sixteen ships that took on grain were ocean-going “salties” bound for ports in Europe, Egypt, Mexico and South America. So far this year, the port has loaded just over 4.9 million tonnes of grain, about one million more than average. Nearly 900 people work at the port, which last month saw a higher than normal number of salties.
In addition to high grain shipments, the port also received a good amount of in-bound motor components, steel beams, windmill parts, heavy machinery and wood pellets.
“There has been a significant increase in general cargo shipments at Keefer Terminal, with year-to-date tonnage nearly double that of the five-year average,” said the release.
Meanwhile, Port Authority CEO Tim Heney said he didn’t think the new Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, which includes Canada, would greatly benefit the port.
“The European Free Trade agreement will likely have a greater impact for Thunder Bay (because) the markets we generally serve are Europe, North Africa the Middle East and Latin America,” Heney said in an email.
Doug Murray, the head of Thunder Bay’s Community Economic Development Commission, said it’s hard to predict any benefit for the Northwest arising from the TPP deal before the agreement’s details have been made public.
But Murray said there could be the “potential” for Thunder Bay manufacturers — the Bombardier light-rail plant, for instance — to obtain cheaper supplies and export into markets they have yet to penetrate.
“A lot will depend on the cost of transportation,” noted Murray. An Ontario government news release, noting a lack of details about the TPP agreement, said it expected the province’s “aerospace, financial services, life sciences and agri-food sectors” to benefit the most from the deal.
