CentrePort Canada Rail Park welcomes second tenant

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This article was published 22/08/2024 (407 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Despite nothing moving on the CN and CPKC rail lines Thursday, there was plenty of activity at the CentrePort Canada Rail Park.

Highway Motor Freight Ltd. has become the second tenant in the 665-acre industrial park in northwest Winnipeg that will have direct access to the Canadian Pacific Kansas City main line.

Its $16-million development, including a 32,000-square-foot transport terminal, is a prelude to an even larger 75,000-sq.-ft. cold storage warehouse facility the nine-year-old company will build next on its new 20-acre site.

The project will create 150 new jobs and is expected to be operational in late 2025. The company currently has about 130 trucks and more than 250 trailers, many of them freezer units.

Highway Motor Freight, a family-owned business founded in 2015 and headed by Jass Dhillon, specializes in food transportation, with customers including Maple Leaf Foods Inc., HyLife Ltd. and the McDonald’s restaurant chain.

“This investment marks a significant milestone in our growth journey and demonstrates our commitment to enhancing service capabilities for our clients,” Dhillon said Thursday. “We specialize in food transportation but we will move anything that can fit in our trailers.”

Highway Motor Freight’s arrival comes almost exactly a year after the first announced tenant at CentrePort Canada Rail Park: a $55-million, 25-acre development by Fastfrate Group.

According to Chris Reiter, senior development manager with Focus Equities, the developer of CentrePort Canada Rail Park, the two companies’ moves are just the beginning.

Reiter said there are five more lots have been sold — two trans-load operations, two warehouse-distribution businesses and a cold storage facility — totalling another 120 acres. Interest in the development is now on the radar screens of site selectors for some of the largest industrial developments in North America, he added.

“The site selectors want to see that there would be community support for these large-scale developments and that’s what we have here,” Reiter said, acknowledging support received from the Rural Municipality of Rosser, Economic Development Winnipeg, and the provincial and federal governments.

As well, the industrial park has caught the eye of a new development expansion group at CPKC, which is trying to forge more partnerships with truckers and other logistics operations.

“They are noticing what we are doing,” Reiter said. “They see us as a golden child. Serviced land is hard to come by. Large-scale serviced land is even harder to come by.”

The rail park will span from the south side of the CPKC Carberry subdivision, with CentrePort Canada Way to the east and Four Mile Road/Selkirk Avenue to the south.

Focus Equities already has its rail line-switching infrastructure designed and are waiting for final approval from CPKC.

The efficacy of the rail park has been widely acknowledged. Last year, it received $18 million from the federal government’s National Trade Corridors Fund to help pay for a second mainline switch, several kilometres of additional track, a lift station and connections to access roads.

Reiter has been travelling to high-level industry events as far south as Monterrey, Mex., raising interest in the development. He said talks with one potential tenant have touched on one million square feet of space and 300 acres.

The announced Highway Motor Freight development is an indication of the maturation of the larger trimodal inland port. The company is moving from a 7,000-sq.-ft. building in Brookside Business Park (another CentrePort development); its new facility will be more than four times its size.

Phase 1 of CentrePort Canada Rail Park, which covers 193 acres of the 665-acre project, remains available for further development, officials said.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca