From crop to port to plate continued from page 11
now who are served by both railways. So the rest of them are on one railway or the other.”
Jim
Prentice Premier of Alberta
Innovation and ingenuity thriving in Southeast Alberta
With more sunny days than anywhere else in the country, Medicine Hat’s ability to look on the bright side should come as no surprise.
A sense of optimism has always served the city – and surrounding communities – well. And despite the recent drop in the price of oil and the financial challenges that have resulted, people in the southeast corner of our province are continuing to demonstrate the hard work, resiliency and can-do attitude Albertans are known for.
Southeast Alberta has long enjoyed prosperity through agriculture. Blue skies and plentiful sunshine have ensured success with a variety of field and specialty crops. Oil and gas production and tourism have also been boons for the local economy.
In recent years, the region has demonstrated leadership in a number of industry sectors – competitive areas like innovative manufacturing and alternative and renewable energy. By embracing new ideas, southeast Alberta has been able to strengthen and diversify its economy. And this means the region will be positioned to make the most of the opportunities before it.
Across southeast Alberta, there are examples of innovation and ingenuity everywhere. Companies like Meggitt Training Systems-Canada in Medicine Hat are global players in the production of unmanned vehicles to support military training. In fact, southeast Alberta is a growing hub for unmanned vehicle development with Meggitt, Canadian Forces
Base Suffield, the Canadian Centre for Unmanned Vehicle Systems and the Village of Foremost all having a role in that success.
The region is also attracting investment in alternative and renewable energy with a number of projects either completed or in the works. Solar power projects have, of course, been a good fit for the area, while a new wind farm near the village of Seven Persons is in the planning phase.
Investments such as these are not just generating energy – they foster employment and a great quality of life for area residents. Unemployment in the region is among the lowest in the province while Medicine Hat’s median family income of nearly $85,000 in 2012 has afforded residents a high standard of living. Major capital projects are also planned, including the hospital redevelopment and new arena in Medicine Hat.
are
pit n
Combine this with good schools, health care and recreational facilities, and southeast Alberta truly is a great place to live, work and play.
In the months ahead, the Alberta government will work hard to weather the financial challenges our province faces, and protect a high quality of life for all Albertans.
Hemmes says there has always been a natural conflict of interest between grain companies which want increased rail capacity to ship more grain and railways which seek to limit their operations to decrease costs.
“From the perspective of the railways their profitability is largely determined on how efficient they can be. They are always striving for 100 per cent asset utilization. It doesn’t necessarily mean you put too much capacity in there because if you put too much capacity in then you have reduced asset utilization. Railways are always looking to fix the amount of locomotives and the amount of staff and the number of cars supplied at something less than what they think the market could demand.”
The railways also need faster turn around times to be efficient, and therefore tend to favour the fastest corridors in their operations with larger elevators receiving most of the car allocations.
“If you are a small bulk shipper or a short line those guys are hurting,” says Hemmes. “Railways were almost forced last year (thanks to Bill C-52) into a position to find their most efficient corridors and focus on them. They are trying to move as much volume in those corridors as quickly as they can so they can hit their tonnage targets. That kind of excludes the U.S., eastern Canada or small bulk shippers.”
Last year farmers became all too familiar with the term demurrage. Dozens of ships waited for over a month at
major
ports like Prince Rupert, Vancouver and Thunder Bay for their grain to arrive resulting in millions of dollars in demurrage penalties. It was like nothing Mark MacKenzie, operations manager at the Alliance Grain Terminal at the Port of Vancouver, had ever seen before in his 35 years of working the port grain terminals.
“There was a lot of money spent on demurrage last year out of Vancouver,” confirms MacKenzie. “I don’t think we have ever had a year like that. Usually for us here our owners do the marketing of the grain. So they make the sales to the ship and from there they have a window that the vessel is going to arrive. The window can be up to 30 days. We are always looking at it five to six weeks out and preparing a list of grain we need to bring into the terminal. Our logistics manager here is looking at that and having our ownership allocate the cars to arrive here in time for that vessel.”
In a normal year the grain moves quite seamlessly from port to the ships coming in.
“We deal with the ships’ in-port agents from here: Times to get the ships in, where they are anchored, etc. We don’t actually deal with the captain of the ship ever,” says MacKenzie. “Some vessels that come might have to wait three or four days, depending on where our line-up is. For us we do about 200,000 or 300,000 tonnes of peas which are mostly going to India. We do a lot of canola and wheat to Japan. We also do quite a lot of wheat down into South America.”
MacKenzie says even after four decades in the business he is still amazed by the industriousness of western Canadian farmers. H. He is also continually amazed by the complexity of getting grain from farm to port and then out into the wider world.
fa he com
fa m to p world.
about it.” ■ 12 2015 REPORT ON SOUTHEAST ALBERTA
“Sometimes when I fly to Winnipeg and head back to th the head office out there you fly over the farmland—it’s amazing how much there is. The size of the whole operation getting it from the farm to the country terminals out to the coast into the ships and off to the destination, unloaded and made into whatever products they are going to turn it into in the end. It is a big operation. It’s pretty awe-inspiring when you think out it.”
“Som Win
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FREE MEMBERSHIPS in 2015 for Medicine Hat Residents
41189965•03/31/15
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