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Port on roll
By KAREN MCKINLEY
Saturday, August 1, 2009

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The Port of Thunder Bay is riding against the tide of recession.
Traffic coming in and out of the port is up 25 per cent this year, said Tim Heney, CEO of the Thunder Bay Port Authority. Shipments in grain and project cargo have made the port one of the busiest on the continent despite other ports reporting declines in shipping by as much as 25 percent.
Shipments in grain increased for the first time in years, making up for a loss in coal shipments. Steel-related shipments are also up.
The Canadian Wheat Board estimated that wheat shipments from the Port of Thunder Bay were up by a third from last year.
The news comes on the heels of the wheat board‘s annual projections of stronger grain exports, the highest in nine years and the second highest in history. The CWB has exported about 18.5 million tonnes of wheat, durum and barley during the crop year, up over a million tonnes from last year, a news release said. From these exports, the CWB is estimating a net revenue of $6 billion, which is returned directly to farmers.
Heney said grain was always a major export from the port, but was steadily declining over recent years.
Since the port opened for shipping in March, around 2,501,763 tonnes of wheat and 345,680 tonnes of canola moved in and out of the port.
“We had a loss in coal because of the economy, but grain and steel made up for it,” Heney said. “We‘re very unique in shipping because it‘s actually going up in our seaways, which is contrary to what the rest of the continent is doing”
He couldn‘t compare The Port of Thunder Bay to ocean seaports. Inland ports from the Lakehead to the St. Lawrence Seaway use 16 locks that ships have to pass through, affecting traffic in an out of the lakes.
A boom in shipments related to wind energy and oilsands development is making the port a major staging centre for the energy sector. Many of the parts for the windmills come from Europe and are so large they have to be shipped over water inland through the great lakes. Pieces of turbines are frequently being unloaded, staged and shipped by railroad from the port, and Heney projects this activity will only increase as green energy becomes more viable.
“We just unloaded a bunch of turbines that are going to Bear Mountain, B.C. for a huge wind farm and there‘s more coming in the next few weeks,” he said.
The oilsands are another major source for the shipping increase. In 2008, CN Rail had a major breakthrough with shipping parts over rail to Northern Alberta, bringing more demand for seaway delivery of large parts. Sometime in the fall, parts of a new project are being shipped to the port where they will be assembled and stored for up to two years or until demand for oil restarts exploration in Alberta.

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