Grain should be moving south from the Northgate-based Ceres Global Ag. Corp. commodities transloading hub later this week.
The move will be read as an alternative route for producers who have been frustrated by the not-so-rapid transportation of grain to western and eastern Canadian ports by using the two traditional Canadian rail systems
In fact, the response from grain producers in southeast Saskatchewan has translated into a full booking of grain shipments from mid-December to the end of March, 2015, said Craig Reiners, vice-president of grain for Ceres, the Toronto-based corporation, who works from the company’s Minneapolis quarters.
In fact, the only holdup now is the fact that a United States Customs building has yet to be placed on site, but the company has received assurances from the American border services team the building was arriving this week and would be installed and ready to house a customs commodities inspector by no later than week’s end.
The hub operations will work with direct transloading practices from truck to rail car temporarily with the construction of a 2.2 million bushel throughput elevator underway and readied for full operation by the fall of 2015 and completed with all services, including grain cleaning equipment by the spring of 2016, said Reiners. He noted power lines are ready, water has been hooked up and septic services are lined up.
Because of the limitations due to the use of direct loading from truck to railcar, the company will be restricted to the movement of about four million bushels of grain this winter. Burlington Northern, Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway will use one set of looped tracks into Canada to pick up the grain before looping back into the U.S. to deliver it to company facilities in Duluth and then onward to mills and ports, in Mexico, the Pacific northwest and other domestic markets and also Italy, the destination for some of the Saskatchewan durum.
The hub will serve double duty within a year since a parallel loop of tracks into the 1,500 acre Northgate centre is being designed to load southeastern Saskatchewan crude oil to deliver to several American refineries as well.
The prospect of delivering goods northward from the U.S. to Canada is also in development stages, said Reiners.
“All the grain being shipped out of southern Saskatchewan is spoken for,” said Reiners, “every bushel has been sold.”
“The $90 million construction budget is pretty well on target,” he added, noting that a lot of money was invested underground or at ground level, at least for now. The elevator will change that.
“I can’t speak with knowledge about the oil loading facility other than to say I know it’s moving forward,” said Reiners who said he makes regular visits to the Northgate site to consult with on-site manager Curtis Larsen and six other employees who are located there now. The employees are originally from Estevan and Oxbow, he said. The company has a couple of houses that were used to assist construction crews during the early stages of the project and have now been returned to their original purpose, to serve as accommodations.
“BNSF’s efforts have been very encouraging,” said the vice-president, referring to the recent $20 million in upgrades the rail company has made to their track and other infrastructure items to facilitate the new business.
Reiners said there was a lot of positive response from producers.
“The key to this project was their positive reaction and encouragement and then the positive response from BNSF.”
Having to wait for the U.S. Customs building has been referred to as an unfortunate glitch that has held the process up, but only temporarily and with the required building destined to arrive this week, Reiners added, customs officials on site on both sides of the border, have been excellent to work with, so the glitch frustrations will be relegated to the background soon enough and it will be all systems go, by mid-December.
