New grain terminal plows ahead

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This article was published 22/12/2016 (3274 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A sister company of Winnipeg-based G3 Canada Ltd. is building a state-of-the-art grain terminal in North Vancouver it says will be “a game-changer” for the Canadian industry.

G3 Canada president and CEO Karl Gerrand said the new terminal being built by G3 Terminal Vancouver will be a next-generation terminal that’s equipped with a rail-loop track capable of holding three 134-car trains — something none of the existing grain-exporting terminals in Canada can do.

The rail-loop track will allow the trains to unload while in continuous motion and return to G3 Canada’s inland primary elevators to pick up more grain without ever having to detach from their locomotives. Gerrand also noted the four new inland terminals G3 recently built — two in Manitoba and two in Saskatchewan — are also equipped with rail-loop track, which speed up the loading there, as well.

“Right now there is a lot of jockeying of cars and breaking up trains to load them (which means) extra loading time,” he said. “So it’s a real game-changer. It’s sort of the future of the grain industry. It’s really going to increase cycle times, and it really increases the efficiency of how grain gets moved to ports. So it’s going to be a real benefit for Canadian farmers.”

The new port terminal, which is expected to open in time for the fall harvest in 2020, will have more than 180,000 metric tonnes of storage and will be able to handle cereal grains, oilseeds, pulses and special crops. Much of the product it handles will be supplied via a throughput agreement G3 Terminal Vancouver has with G3 Canada, whose assets include primary grain elevators and port terminals stretching from Leader, Sask., to Quebec City, a Great Lake grain-transportation vessel and Canada’s largest private fleet of grain hopper cars.

The president of the Grain Growers of Canada, which represents more than 50,000 grain, oilseed and pulse growers in Canada, said the new port terminal will be a great new asset for the Canadian grain industry.

“Especially for us grain farmers in the West. We need to see increased export opportunities, and this new terminal will bring that,” Jeff Nielsen said.

But Nielsen noted the benefits of the new export terminal won’t be fully realized if Canada’s railways can’t get grain to the West Coast in a timely fashion.

“We know that’s our biggest challenge when it comes to shipping grain — the railroads,” he said. “If they’re willing to provide the service, we can move grain faster to the terminals. That’s what we need.”

Nielsen said new rail-reform legislation the federal government is expected to introduce in the spring hopefully will provide for increased accountability for the railroads.

“If they can get the product to the coast on time, then that’s great. And if not, the new legislation will bring in penalties,” he added.

To ensure its new port terminal will have plenty of grain to handle, Gerrand said G3 Canada will be building eight to 10 more high-throughput elevators on the Prairies over the next two to three years.

“We want to have them (the new inland terminals) all finished by the time it opens because we want to start feeding grain to it.”

He said most of the new inland terminals will be built in Saskatchewan and Alberta because the company already has three inland terminals in Manitoba.

Once the new Vancouver terminal opens, the company’s inland terminals in Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan will feed grain to its four export terminals in Eastern Canada, and its inland terminals in the rest of Saskatchewan and in Alberta will feed grain to the new West Coast facility.

Gerrand wouldn’t reveal how much G3 expects to spend on building the new Vancouver terminal, other than to say that “it’s in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Although the other major grain-handling companies, including Winnipeg-based James Richardson International, have expanded their West Coast port terminals in recent years, Gerrand noted the new G3 terminal will be the first new terminal built in Vancouver since the 1960s.

Because it will be the only new-generation terminal on the West Coast and the only one with a rail-loop track, that should give the company an advantage over its competitors, he said, and also help to attract more farm customers.

G3 Global Grain Group is the parent company of G3 Canada Limited and G3 Terminal Vancouver. G3 Global Grain Group acquired the assets of CWB (formerly the Canadian Wheat Board) in 2015. It is owned by G3 Global Holdings, which is a joint venture between Bunge Canada and Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Company Canada Limited.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca