Arctic Gateway Group secures first shipment of ore
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/12/2023 (668 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Arctic Gateway Group (AGG), the Indigenous-owned company that owns and operates the Hudson Bay Railway and Port of Churchill, has secured its first shipment of ore.
The company has reached an agreement with HudBay Minerals to ship 20,000 tonnes of zinc concentrate from its Lalor Mine in Snow Lake to Churchill in 2024.
Mike Woelcke, CEO of AGG, said, “This is not huge, but it is very, very positive for us.”
The shipment will take place likely in the second quarter of 2024.
It will moved in about 200 freight cars over the course of about three months in the new year. That size of cargo would likely be one shipload.
During the winter, freight trains to Churchill can be as short as 10 cars long but in the summer they can be as long as 100 cars.
In 2023 the company completed a record $40 million on repairs on track infrastructure, which means improved speeds on freight and passenger trains and shortening the Thompson to Churchill leg of the trip from 21 hours to 17.5.
Before the ore arrives in Churchill, AGG will have to construct a storage facility for the ore near the port site. It’s going to allow the company to call back some port workers before the 2024 shipping season.
The ore will be trucked from Snow Lake to Flin Flon — there is no rail service in Snow Lake –— and loaded onto rail cars, shipped to The Pas and then up to Churchill.
There is no indication yet if there will be subsequent shipments.
“We will evaluate the success at the end of the season,” Woelcke said. “If successful we hope it will turn into something significantly more than that. There is an indication we are interested and they are interested. That’s why it’s a trial shipment.”
While there’s no certainty it won’t be a one-off shipment, it is the kind of commercial breakthrough that AGG has been looking for since it acquired the railway and port from Colorado-based Omnitrax in 2018.
Mike Spence, mayor of Churchill and chairman of the board of AGG, said, “It’s a significant announcement, and it really shows that we’re diversifying exports.”
The company has been working hard at establishing supply chain opportunities for Canada’s only Arctic Ocean port.
“We’re pretty excited as we turn the corner on expansion and opportunities that lay ahead of us,” Spence said.
— with files from Gabrielle Piche
martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
