Future undecided for grain elevator as Port of Halifax expands
The future of the grain elevator at the Port of Halifax remains murky as the port continues with an ambitious expansion aimed at growing its cargo and cruise ship businesses.
Kim Batherson, general manager of Halifax Grain Elevator Limited, said her large storage facility that’s been in operation since 1924 risks losing its export pier berth to make way for an enlarged shipping container platform.
Batherson said her company’s lease expires at the end of 2026, and customers need answers soon on whether they can continue to store and ship commodities such as soybeans, milling grain and wood pellets through the only facility of its kind in the Maritimes.
“I do feel like they (the port) are looking at solutions,” she said in an interview late last month. “I do hope that we can come up with something that enables them to continue their expansion of the container pier, but still allows us to do what we do here.”
The grain elevator has 365 silos that can store up to 140,000 tonnes of grain at a time, Batherson said, adding that last year it handled 500,000 tonnes worth of business. “If the port takes away our ability to export they would be taking away 60 per cent of our business,” she said. “We are not going to be a viable business anymore.”
The port’s 50-year plan, released in 2022, includes filling in the elevator’s export docking berth where ships are loaded, to allow for the expansion of the port’s cargo business.
In a recent statement to The Canadian Press, the port authority said it’s seeking a solution that “supports ongoing operations at the grain elevator and continued port expansion plans.”
It said that it has been meeting with provincial and federal representatives as well as with those in the agricultural and forestry sectors and Halifax Grain Elevator Limited. The port authority added that discussions were ongoing and “no decisions have been made.”
Batherson and some of the elevator’s key customers say they are running out of time to plan for next season’s harvest.
Soybean farmer Bill Biggs said Maritime farmers need to know what may happen before the end of this year. “We plan our crop rotation six months in advance so we can order things such as seed,” said Biggs. “Most farmers order before the end of December.”
Biggs, whose farm is located just outside Wolfville, N.S., said farms in his area of the Annapolis Valley produce as much as 3,000 tonnes of soybeans for storage and export each year. The vast majority of that tonnage, along with the tonnage of some farmers in New Brunswick and P.E.I., is exported through the Halifax grain elevator, he said.
The loss of the Halifax facility, Biggs said, would force farmers to ship through Montreal, increasing costs. “If we lost the Halifax grain elevator altogether it’s definitely going to hurt the soybean industry in the Maritimes,” he said.
The urgency is also felt by Veselin Milosevic, COO of Great Northern Timber Holdings, whose company exports wood pellets to the European Union through the grain elevator’s facilities at the port.
“It is critical to our business in various ways, one of them being the actual storage,” Milosevic said. “We are a bulk exporter and without the storage and export terminal we just cannot be in business.”
He said his operation in Upper Musquodoboit, N.S., moves more than 100,000 tonnes of wood pellets each year, with only less than one per cent of production sold locally.
Without the Halifax facility the only option is the port facility in Belldune, N.B., which is several hours drive away, Milosevic said.
“Transportation is the killer to exporting wood pellets, if you don’t have a local solution, say within a 100-kilometre radius from your manufacturing plant, you basically are out of business,” he said.
Batherson said it’s a matter of the port realizing the significance of the elevator to its customers and the Atlantic region as a whole. “It’s not just about what Halifax Grain pays the Port of Halifax in rent every year, it’s about all of the business that goes through here,” she said.
Earlier this summer, Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston also weighed in on the importance of the elevator.
“That’s been an ongoing discussion for some time, that grain elevator is incredibly important to our province and we will fight tooth and nail to keep it,” the premier said.
globalnews
