Not your grandpa’s elevator

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This article was published 17/11/2021 (1446 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Parrish & Heimbecker may be a 112-year-old company, but its newest high through-put grain elevator, just outside Dugald, Man. has all bells and whistles that the modern, highly efficient grain industry now expects.

Even before the company acquired 10 country elevators from the Louis Dreyfus Company in 2019 it had already been on an aggressive expansion spree building new elevators in Biggar, Sask., Gladstone, Man. and Viking, Alta.

And before the 25,000 tonne capacity elevator was completed earlier this year in Dugald, just a few kilometers outside Winnipeg, it had already started construction on another in Yorkton, Sask.

The company now has 35 grain and crop input locations across Western Canada, four in Eastern Canada and a total of eight terminals on the Great Lakes and the Pacific coast. The company also boasts the largest Canadian-owned flour-milling business, P&H Milling Group with eight mills, and New-Life Mills, a feed mill operation with another five mills.

Coming off the most serious drought in Western Canada in 20 years might not seem like the best time to invest about $50 million in new handling infrastructure, but Parrish & Heimbecker officials say that, on the contrary, it will both help the company in a very competitive marketplace and it will help producers in their efforts to become that much more efficient.

Daryl McCharles, the company’s general manager of the western region, said, “This is one of the most challenging years I’ve seen and I’ve been in this business for a long time. We’re working closely with producers to ensure they survive this challenging marketplace.”

The new facility, which replaces a de-commissioned elevator the company owned in Transcona, features its own 150 car CN loop track for much quicker turn around.

Whereas the old Transcona elevator would only handle 25 cars at once and could load three cars per hour, the new facility can handle 15 per hour.

As well, it is outfitted with all the technology that ensures that no contaminated grain gets into the system and can track and trace the inputs usually right back to the specific bin on the farmers lot.

Dave Yarycky, the general manager of the Dugald elevator, said the design includes all sorts of safety measures including covered conveyors to eliminate dust.

On the spotless floor on the bowels of the elevator, Yarycky noted that “in an older elevator we’d be standing a few inches deep in dust.”

After building its own rail loop connecting to the CN main line, P&H has built fertilizer and chemical handling at Dugald as well as seed bins to the product offering providing the kind of one-stop shopping that this region’s highly competitive marketplace demands.

Producers in the Winnipeg area enjoy one the most competitive marketplaces in Western Canada when it comes to grain handlers in the market to buy production.

“Producers around Winnipeg are sharp customers. They are not taking less for their grain than what they want,” Yarycky said. “There are five or six mainline grain handlers active in the market and lots of feed mills and end users in the area. That leads to competition which is great for the producer. That’s why we have to be on the ball to give the best service and the best price.”

To help lure customers, the facility includes a 6,800 tonne fertilizer shed something that is not always available where there is rail access, a 7,800 square foot heated chemical shed and seed treatment facility.

With wheat prices over $8 per bushel and canola prices above $16 per bushel, savvy producers can do well with what yield they do have.

Zach Harrison, P&H’s construction engineer in charge of the construction at Dugald and the Yorkton facility that is being built, said the company is always learning new and more efficient ways to go about the process.

“This one will help improve our place in the market,” Harrison said. “What P&H has done over recent years is we have got larger in the crop input operation adding fertilizer, chemicals, herbicide and seeds providing a full service facility. We can give the farmer everything they need to produce a high yielding crop.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca