Grain shipments through Port of Churchill to resume this summer, Arctic Gateway says

The owner of the Port of Churchill says grain shipments through Hudson Bay will resume this summer, ending a five-year period when the port was not used to move the commodity it was designed to store and transport.

Grain shipments through Port of Churchill to resume this summer, Arctic Gateway says Commodity's movement was suspended at Manitoba site amid pandemic The owner of the Port of Churchill says grain shipments through Hudson Bay will resume this summer, ending a five-year period when the port was not used to move the commodity it was designed to store and transport. At least two shipments of grain will leave Churchill, with the first departing in late August or early September, said Chris Avery, CEO of Arctic Gateway Group, which owns the port and the Hudson Bay Railway.

"Given the history of grain at the Port of Churchill, this is a significant event in the sense of grain coming back to Churchill, going to global markets," he said at Arctic Gateway's office at Union Station in downtown Winnipeg on Wednesday. Grain shipments at the Port of Churchill date back to 1931 but were suspended between 2016 and 2018, when the railway fell into disrepair. Shipments resumed in 2019 after Arctic Gateway bought the railway and port but were suspended in 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Avery said 2026 will be the most diverse shipping season for the Port of Churchill since Arctic Gateway acquired Manitoba's only seaport. Supply ships bound for Arctic communities and one potash shipment will also leave the port, he said. Avery said he is unable to disclose many details about the grain shipment.

He said he could not divulge the identity of the seller and would only describe the buyer as a global company that is "a significant major player in the agricultural space." Avery also would not identify the specific commodity that will be shipped, state its destination or quantify the volume of grain that will be shipped. Konrad Narth, a grain farmer who serves as the Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba's agriculture critic, said the lack of detail raises questions even as he described the shipments as good news.

"Who are the sellers of product? Who are the buyers of those products, and how do we see that coming together, because right now we're not hearing of any private investment," he said in a Zoom interview from Grunthal, south of Winnipeg. Manitoba's NDP government declined requests by CBC News for an interview.

In a statement, Business, Mining, Trade and Job Creation Minister Jamie Moses said his government is pleased to see grain shipments resume through Churchill. Questions remain about railbed, port improvements Avery could not say how many ships in total will visit the Port of Churchill this coming season, though he did say the minimum number would be six. Higher shipping volumes at the port in the future will require Arctic Gateway to rebuild the railbed that supports the Hudson Bay Railway to shipping industry standards.

That means increasing the railbed's load capacity from the current maximum of 268,000-pound railcars to allow it to handle cars weighing 286,000 pounds. An engineering study that would determine the cost of this project should be conducted this year, Avery said. Arctic Gateway is also waiting for private company Fednav to complete a study into the feasibility of year-round shipping through the Port of Churchill, something that would be compulsory if Manitoba ever fulfil's Premier Wab Kinew's stated goal of shipping liquid natural gas through Hudson Bay.

The federal government, meanwhile, has completed a study to determine whether there are markets available for goods shipped out of Churchill. Avery said the study reaffirms what Arctic Gateway believed but said he can not release the study because it belongs to Ottawa. The federal Liberal government did not respond to a request for the study.

Narth encouraged Manitobans to distinguish between the improvement of the port and railway to increase shipping through Hudson Bay — a very plausible project Arctic Gateway has undertaken since its inception — from the more difficult task of building a natural gas pipeline to Churchill. "There's the Port of Churchill as the big nation-building project, the pie in the sky dream," Narth said. "And then there's the Port of Churchill being beneficial to moving some grain, moving some other resources out of Manitoba and helping the growth and sustainability of Churchill as a community."