Mineral storage facility first new building at Port of Churchill in decades

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This article was published 31/05/2024 (502 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The company that owns the Port of Churchill and Hudson Bay Railway has completed construction of the first new building at the northern Manitoba port site in several decades.

A mineral storage facility may not be an elaborate or expensive structure, but it marks an important milestone for Canada’s only deep-water port on the Arctic Ocean — handling facilities for shipments of critical minerals.

The building will start receiving a total of 20,000 tonnes of zinc concentrate this summer from HudBay Minerals’ Lalor Mine at Snow Lake.

It’s expected to be loaded onto a ship sometime in August for transport to a destination the company has not yet publicly disclosed.

Mike Spence, mayor of Churchill and chairman of the board of the Arctic Gateway Group which owns the port and railway, said the development is a signal of the kind of potential that exists for the northern hub.

“It is a very important step,” he said. “There will be more to come.”

The physical development at the port is part of $60-million worth of capital investment Arctic Gateway will be engaged in this year.

Since 2018, the federal and provincial governments have committed about $300 million to Arctic Gateway group, which is owned by northern First Nations and communities on the Hudson Bay Railway.

The funds have been used to undertake significant and much-needed upgrades to the rail line, as well as the developments at the port.

Including the construction of the mineral storage facility, this year’s capital spending of about $60 million includes new equipment, including cargo container handlers, skid feeders, expansion hoppers, loaders and transfer conveyors, as well as 125,000 rail tie replacements, 800,000 feet of resurfacing, several crossing rehabilitations, turnout replacements and various bridge improvements on the rail line.

The zinc concentrate from HudBay Minerals is arriving by covered gondola rail cars over the next two months (some 225 cars of material).

Freight service between Winnipeg and Churchill will increase from once to twice per week. Churchill is located some 1,000 kilometres north of the Manitoba capital.

The ore will be trucked to Flin Flon from Snow Lake (there is no rail service at Snow Lake) and loaded onto rail cars, shipped to The Pas and then on to Churchill.

While Spence said AGG is hopeful the 20,000-tonne mineral shipment will not be the last, there are no guarantees the process will be replicated in the future. “The goal here is to work toward more shipments. I think HudBay is excited about shipping through the Port of Churchill.”

Spokespeople for HudBay Minerals were unavailable Friday.

Spence said Arctic Gateway Group’s business development team is working hard talking to other potential cargo customers for the port.

He said resupply shipments to communities along the western shore of Hudson Bay in the Kivalliq region of Nunavut have been increasing this year as an alternative to the traditional cargo transports from Montreal.

Interested parties in Churchill and elsewhere in Manitoba have long argued for a greater share of that cargo work.

Among other things, if Kivalliq supply comes out of Churchill, there is a greater chance for other suppliers in Manitoba to take part in that commercial activity.

“Our responsibility at Arctic Gateway is to encourage Manitoba business to be part of that,” Spence said. “Why not buy product like vehicles or heavy equipment from Manitoba suppliers, rather than have it coming from Quebec”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca