The first rail cars loaded with grain have left the Northgate logistics hub operated by Ceres Global Ag Corp.
The company said the Jan. 12 departure of 63 grain cars on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) rail system heralds a new era for local agricultural producers.
The grain was transloaded into the rail cars using temporary loading equipment that was installed in October of last year.
A United States Customs trailer was brought on to the site in late December. That also had to be equipped and staffed prior to the granting of permission to begin loading and transporting Saskatchewan grain into the U.S. market.
Wheat and other agricultural commodities shipments will now proceed as planned at the Northgate facility.
“The arrival of the 63 BNSF hopper cars represents a major milestone for Ceres,” said Patrick Bracken, Ceres CEO. “Northgate is now fully operational and able to provide grain farmers with a critical north/south link into BNSF’s 32,000 mile network, while boosting origination opportunities and potentially improving efficiencies and margins for Riverland Ag.”
Riverland Ag is a subsidiary of Toronto-based Ceres Global Ag. Corp, operating in the U.S. and Canada with nine grain storage assets in Minnesota, New York and Ontario. Riverland also manages two storage facilities in Wyoming on behalf of Stewart Southern Railway, a company, also operating in southeast Saskatchewan, in which they have a 25 per cent ownership.
Ceres anticipates sourcing wheat and grains from farms located throughout southeast Saskatchewan, and, in fact, during an interview with the Mercury in December, Craig Reiners, vice-president of grain operations for Ceres, noted that most of the capacity for loading and shipping was already assigned up until March of this year, thanks to local producer interest in delivering their products to alternative markets, mills and ports.
The total Northgate project is far from complete though, since the company is currently constructing a permanent high speed elevator and loading dock with a 2.2 million bushel storage capacity that will allow them, and BNSF, to quickly load a 120 car shuttle train through the looped track on the Canadian side of the system. That elevator will be completed by October of this year and will be completed in the spring of 2016, the company said.
The entire project, once completed, will include an oil and oilfied supplies transloading site with unit trains arriving on separate but parallel tracks at Northgate, providing ultimate efficiency in loading and unloading products for the two major resource sectors in southern Saskatchewan.
