Grainswest - Fall 2022

Fall 2022 grainswest.com 33 T he Port of Prince Rupert is a remote but critical link in the Canadian crop export chain. Located in Prince Rupert Harbour just south of the Alaska Panhandle on British Columbia’s rugged Pacific coastline, its facilities are strung along a 20-kilometre stretch of Kaien Island, adjacent to the Prince Rupert townsite. A lesser-known departure point for Canadian grain exports, the Port has capacity to move approximately 7.5 million tonnes of grain annually, and it ranks third in shipped grain tonnage behind sister ports in Vancouver and Thunder Bay. While the Port has no control over rail capacity, it may prove a limiting factor in the export of the 2022 grain harvest. For their part, the Port and Prince Rupert Grain Terminal (PRGT) are ready and able to serve the export needs of grain companies, according to Port officials. “Rupert plays a really important role so that shippers have more than one option on the West Coast,” said Brian Friesen, vice-president of trade development and real estate for the Prince Rupert Port Authority. This market access diversification is critical for Canadian grain exports and the wide range of other goods shipped through the Port’s terminals. Such products include containerized consumer goods, bulk wood pellets and liquid propane. The Port offers the shortest and fastest trade route from North America’s West Coast to markets in Asia and the Middle East. The ocean voyage for trade vessels is 40 hours shorter from Prince Rupert to Shanghai than it is from Vancouver. Its naturally wide and protected shipping approaches make it possible to successfully berth in just two hours. This is half the time typically required to settle in at the Port of Vancouver and a quarter that of the Port of Seattle. Being the deepest natural harbour in North America, it is inherently safer than shallower ports and can accommodate the largest shipping vessels. Arguably, the Port of Prince Rupert’s main selling feature is that it isn’t the Port of Vancouver. “There’s so much congestion now at the Port of Vancouver because a number of Canadian exporters put their products through the Port and, of course, the big bottleneck is the rail service into the Port of Vancouver,” said Jason Fletcher, president of Prince Rupert Grain, the corporation that owns and operates the PRGT. “For an exporting nation like ours, it’s a very big deal. Anything that shippers can do to help the railways with another conduit to tidewater is immensely important.” In addition to taking pressure off the Port of Vancouver, Prince Rupert is vital to keep ships moving when crisis strikes. “For Canada, having two ports on the West Coast is critical for supply chain resiliency and our ability to continue to serve international markets,” said Friesen. “We saw that really punctuated with the unfortunate flooding and washout events late last year, which really had a significant impact on rail operations in and out [of the Port of Vancouver]. In that case, Rupert wasn’t impacted and cargo was still able to flow.” The Port of Prince Rupert links North America’s most northerly rail line to the rest of the world. In the Second World War, it served as a critical launchpad to key conflict points in Asia. Its first shipping terminal, the Fairview Terminal, was completed in 1975. However, it wasn’t until the late 1990s when the Port Authority was established that the Port became a recognized international trade gateway. The Port Authority, which answers to the federal minister of transportation, ensures the facility runs safely and efficiently and acts as a landlord to its six tenant terminals. Each of these is responsible for its own handling and co-ordination of shipments. The Port’s grain handling hub, the PRGT was built in 1985. It is operated as a joint venture by majority occupant Viterra and tenants Cargill and the Richardson Group. PRGT primarily handles Prairie wheat, barley and canola, as well as feed screenings and other byproducts. PRGT boasts the highest throughput of any grain-cleaning elevator in Canada. Its state-of-the-art equipment can clean more than 13 railcars of grain per hour, essentially as fast as they can be unloaded. The terminal is equipped with eight shipping bins and three tower-mounted loading spouts, which together can load up to 4,000 tonnes per hour into waiting ships. While annual shipping totals depend on crop yield, an average year sees the flow of between 5.5 million and six million tonnes. A complement to bulk shipment, the export of containerized grain has become a secondary option for Canadian exporters and the means to serve a wider array of customers. The shipment of bagged grain in 20-foot containers offers certain advantages. These include identity preservation, small-lot capacity, the ability to trade in-transit and more. They have become an increasingly attractive means to ship high-end and commodity grain as well as grain products, though containerized shipping remains a very small part of overall grain shipping in Canada. DP World’s Fairview Container Terminal, the Port of Prince Rupert’s sole container terminal, recently completed a major The Port of Prince Rupert has the capacity to handle 7.5 million tonnes of grain annually, but averages between 5.5 and six million.