Of course YXS can become a perishable goods export centre, providing the correct infrastructure is built to store and handle those goods prior to shipping.

Now, where’s my $15K????

Easy money for these guys and $15,000 down the drain for the taxpayer. All they need to do is cut and paste their Horizon Air report, change a few names and voila! A new multi million dollar pipe dream.

Whispers….. The Okanagan is closer to Vancouver than it is to PG planes are already going back and forth to Asia everyday from Vancouver. Doesn’t Kelowna have an Airpot?

Would this kind of study not already full under the mandate of what IPG should be doing? Is the 15K for an external consultant? Seems pretty ridiculous. Does anyone know, are these reports atleast made public once completed?

The problem with the Kelowna airport is that its not set up for sending goods in and out in large quantities, It would mean that they will need to extend the run way.

The problem with Vancouver is that it is already too congested, the distance and fuel consumption is more, and so is the landing and takeoff fees.

The problem with Prince George is, like kelowna it needs a facility to send out the goods, YXS has the 3rd longest runway in Canada.

Realistically, perishable goods will not be limited to fresh fruit and vegetable. It can be fresh fish, wild game etc. The problem being we may only be able to get one plane out every two weeks. It is a plausible plan if it is piggy backed onto another plan. But I doubt it is self sustainable. Fresh fruit in the area is only available for a fixed few months. We don’t have enough wild game nor fish to make a weekly commitment.

Psst, where do I send in my invoice.

What is it that will kick start this. One enterprising business man, who has a transport company.

Basically, if it fits in a plane, will transport it to BC or Alberta in 48 hrs from Leaving China. Money is no object.

Look at Target, their set up in Canada. Give them almost free land, we have the set of tracks that run by the town, we have the airport for cargo. Make Prince George the western Canada’s distribution center. All the crap comes from China anyway, the trains roll right under our noses anyway.

What happened to “build it and they will come”?

This “study” should have been done as part of the feasibility study BEFORE the runway was built. In addition, the study should have included other types of cargo, in all cases both in and outbound.

AFTER the runway was in place, THAT feasibility study should have been reviewed to identify if there was any change – additions and deletions.

Now that the logistics park is almost in place and ready to have refrigerated buildings as well as other buildings built by private enterprise to support ANY type of cargo which has to have a model transfer, another review would be in order which can now be done at the same time as a marketing program to get companies to take action. We were never in a position to be at that point.

We are running a bit late with this kind of market sounding; however, we can now follow any possible interest up with completion of an agreement.

The money IPG gets from the City only covers part of their cost, thus they have to go hat in hand whenever the opportunity strikes to allow them to carry out their work. The question I have is why they are in that position. Are they being less than efficient?

Let’s start shipping our food to China and watch our prices climb. Yeah, brilliant idea.

Anyone know just what perishable goods we send to china? If any? Maple syrup?
Are we paying to have someone say ” china doesn’t import perishable goods from Canada” ?
Cheque please.

Maybe another IPG/city junket to China is in order. This may be the fruit born by the last taxpayer funded excursion to the promised land.

“This “study” should have been done as part of the feasibility study BEFORE the runway was built.”

Come on gus you can’t expect the Ready, Shoot, Aim gang to follow logical steps!

That being said at least now they are beating the bushes trying to get some business to the city rather than acting as a taxpayer funded headhunting firm for Canfor and Bid.

Winnipeg’s Inland Port, Centreport, will be the distribution terminal for Western Canada. Look it up. It already has the blessing of the Federal Government, and has been declared as a *Duty Free Zone*. (The only one in Canada.) The Fed’s have given them $200 Million to get the ball rolling.

How do you think all the fresh fruit and vegetables, and perishables are presently being shipped around the world???? They are trucked and flown to Vancouver, and shipped on by Air Freight. China Air has approx 8 direct flights to China a week, that can handle freight in addition to passengers. Then you also have Korean Air, Japan Air, Lufstanza, etc; etc; etc;.

Anyone who thinks this shipping pattern will be changed to run one or two flights a week out of Prince George to China is dreaming in technicolour.

We need to quit thinking we are players on the world stage. It just isnt so. Lets become professional on what we can do, as opposed to always trying to do what we cant do.

The Airport Expansion, Boundry Road, Community Energy System, Police Station, IPG, etc; are prime examples of a small town in the middle of nowhere gone mad.

Its time to get back to the basics. The people at IPG have absolutely no clue, when it comes to transportation, or the importing or exporting business. Business in this area know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. They do not now, nor have they ever needed any advice from IPG to get the job done.

Lets save some money. Close down IPG.

$15 thousand dinars, eh? If that was the “contract price” maybe they should have hired the consultants to do their report on an hourly basis. Might have been cheaper.

“Business in this area know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it”

Boy, that sure is blind faith!!!!

Some business does …. no doubt….. others do not …..

The challenge is that every city in Canada is in the same predicament of keeping and growing their commercial base. Some have less work to do than others at that. In fact, some are cursed with having too much growth because of the location, location, location factor of doing business. Others are able to transcend that.

Winnipeg is simply a situation of a city which was a transportation hub during the times of the railway, as was Chicago. Chicago was able to continue to grow, Winnipeg was not. It now lucked into a subsidy and associated policy shange of the current federal government. I see no natural reason for Winnipeg to be the distribution terminal.

Let’s see if the attitude of build it and they will come will work for Winnipeg. My bets are that it won’t. I think it is better described as the transportation blockage.

Prince George is ideally situated for any number of things related to air travel the issue is getting the big shipping companies to try an untested market.

Kelowna and Scamloops are ideally situated for fruits and other perishables however neither airport is desirable for heavy cargo transports due to runway length.

Many US. Based shipping companies currently ship a lot of their cargo to Alaska as that is the main transportation hub to Asia ATM. PGs airport plan is to try to convince 5% of Alaskas cargo stops be err outed to PG not only is it viable but 3 cargo carriers have publicly stated that PG is an ideal solution for them however the limiting factor was fuel and storage and the fuel problem has been dealt with and storage is ongoing.

But as usual people try to find the negative in everything I remember when I first moved here people were saying PG would never grow well they were wrong since I been here 4 huge box stores moved in and many more have expressed interest tourism has increased many times over and 2 European carriers and 1 Asian carrier have expressed interest in making PG a 5 month travel destination spot.

It will happen but it’s a matter of when but I expect the naysayers to bring up a whole bunch of papers and facts to say I am wrong let them bring it on.

Perishable goods and aboriginal art. Ya…..that will fly.

Dearth. Not sure where you get your information from, but 4 huge box stores might have been built, but you neglect to mention that in the process many other stores closed down.

1. Kresge
2. McCleods
3. Woolco
4. Woodwards
5. Safeway
6. McInnis Building Supplies (Ist Ave)
7. W H Malkins (Food Distribution)
8. Kelly Douglas (Food Distribution)
9. Slade and Stewart (Food Distribution)
10.Timbermart on the Hart.
11.Super Valu
12 Extra Foods.
13.Thunderbird Electric
14.Safeco
15.Dairyland.

Etc; etc; etc;

Anchorage Airport has 700 Wide Body Cargo Aircraft arriving and departing every week. I doubt if we will be able to pull any of this business away. One of the reasons would be, because they have huge warehousing and distribution terminals in Achorage. They have been in this business since 1916. There are many other reasons why Anchorage is preferable to airlines, which I will not go into at this time.

Suffice to say that with the completion of the airport runway in Prince George in 2007 we were anticipating some business by 2008,. Fact is 5 years later, all we get is excuses as to why we are not getting any business.

If in fact we can get a few planes a week to land and take off from Prince George it would at best create 3 or 4 jobs, and the only revenue would be fuel sales for the oil companies, and a few dollars in landing an take off fee’s.

So dont hold you breath for any big increase in business or increase in jobs.

Dont forget that when the Airport was turned over to the Airport Authority they cut 20 jobs,. So I suspect we have a long way to go (job wise) just to get back to where we started.

Have a nice day.

He Spoke is right about Target. Excellent choice to try and get a western distribution center located in PG. That idea does have potential IMO but it would be the economics of it that would make it happen and not PG politicians. Stuff coming from China should naturally be broken down in PG and redistributed from here to Alberta to the West and BC to the South.

Excel owns a lot of land on River Road and I’ve heard rumors the management would like to buy its way into a shipping logistics company and put a container stuffing terminal there… but I don’t think they would as there isn’t the skills for that kind of transition in the company at present.

I think a great idea would be to sister city with a central distribution port city in the free world part of Southeast Asia… in a country that speaks English and is an ally, but although being the most centrally located port city in Southeast Asia is like PG in that it hasn’t reached its potential and is eager to find partners.

That city I have in mind would be Davao on the Southern side of Mindanao Island in the Philippines. Service center to nearly half the population of the Philippines with the population of Canada living on Mindanao Island alone. A city that is equal distance from Hong Kong, Manila, and Singapore… the other more expensive regional shipping centers… and a city that is serviced by all the major regional airlines multiple times daily.

From Canada we could send them beef and fruits, which are very rare in that part of the world, because fruits don’t grow in the tropics and they don’t have the land for large beef operations. We could also send them tourists as their beaches are world class quality at a fraction of the cost of Mexico (and English is the national language).

From Visayans (Southern Philippines) and region we could import sea food, which is abundant, and other tropics based produce.

Philippine Air already flies capacity flights daily into Vancouver as a stop over to Las Vegas and Los Angelas, because they can’t get multiple landing rights in the US or Canada. This is one of the cheapest airlines to fly in the world with an impeccable safety record and a network that covers every major city in East and Southeast Asia.

The idea would be to give them an option to increase their capacity into the US main cities where Filipino’s work… and in turn give PG direct access to Las Vegas and Los Angeles in the US as well as sun spots in Southeast Asia, and likely enable direct flights between PG and Winnipeg another city with another large Filipino community. Meanwhile the freight is just the gravy that enables the new infrastructure and provides a base to enable other larger shipping operations to move in with economies of scale.

Time Will Tell

1. Kresge
2. McCleods
3. Woolco
4. Woodwards
5. Safeway
6. McInnis Building Supplies (Ist Ave)
7. W H Malkins (Food Distribution)
8. Kelly Douglas (Food Distribution)
9. Slade and Stewart (Food Distribution)
10.Timbermart on the Hart.
11.Super Valu
12 Extra Foods.
13.Thunderbird Electric
14.Safeco
15.Dairyland.

Almost all those stores you have listed either got sold out by their parent company, shut down to labour strife(Woolco, Extra foods), went bankrupt even though PG tended to do well(thunderbird, Safeway) in sales and others simply closed their doors.

Yes getting the airport going has been slow and the people the authority laid off was not ideal you have to remember they went from federal funding to private funding so desicions had to be made some good some bad.

2008 was the year the world had a melt down stopping everything in its tracks including the airport plans as many cargo carriers ended up getting less cargo being sent and it just started to rebound last yr with cargo shipments at 90% of 2008.

PG airport athority has always maintained that they want only 5% of Anchorage’s annual cargo flights which equates to 5 flights per day in and out of PG. PG airport authority realizes what Anchorage has and reconizes that it cannot hope to compete with what Anchorage has as it is well established.

The idea has been to start small and work up to being established and reconized by the cargo carrying community and serious inroads have been made there. A bonus is the cargo terminals in Prince Rupert and that PG has 2 major roadways and 2 rail lines going in 4 directions something few cities in the north can boast.

This makes PG viable to carriers reguardless whether they are on an established route or looking for new territory.In Anchorage almost everything is either flown or shipped in or out which is a huge cost whereas PG offers an alternative in that shipping can be done by rail or road both of which are considerably cheaper than air or water travel.

As to cargo terminals being built here there are 3 chinese cargo carriers, 2 Japanese cargo carriers and 5 passenger carriers have all expressed serious interest in PG and many trips have been made by several delegations from those companies to here and vice versa us to them to open agreements of understanding and options open going both ways.

It has never been well reported by the regions reporters including The Citizen, CKPG, and other news outlets including opinion 250. Alaskan newspapers report more about PG than our local media does when it comes to air. Why I don’t know but reguardless I feel that PG is very close to getting a big boost in air traffic but time will tell whether I am right or not.

Eagleone. Containers from China to the rest of BC come into the Port of Vancouver and are warehoused or distributed from there. This has been going on for years.

Vancouver is the major distribution point for all of BC. Edmonton and Calgary are the distribution points for everything else from the US Midwest to the Eastern US, Eastern Cda and Europe. These distribution centres have been set up and have been working just fine for decades. There is absolutely no reason to take product off a ship in Prince Rupert send it to Prince George, put it through a warehouse and distribute it through out BC. This would be inefficent to say the least.

The container ships that off load containers in Prince Rupert, for the Eastern US, then go to Vancouver and off load, and then on the Los Angeles, Portland, etc;

The majority of product coming into BC in Containers for BC would be for the greater Vancouver area. Why would you bring it to Prince George and then send it to Vancouver, or other areas. Common sense dictates that you would do it all in Vancouver. Why have two separate operations?? You wouldnt.

Prince George as a container, or air cargo distribution centre is a pipe dream.

The idea that Cargo Airlines will build distribution Centres and fly Cargo Planes in and out of Prince George is pure fantasy.

In fact the Cargo Planes being built to-day can fly non-stop from New York to Beijing or Hong Kong, and there is less and less reason for them to stop for fuel.

The fact of the matter is we in Prince George (AS USUAL) are a day late and a dollar short.

The only thing happening at the Prince George Airport is the fact that the Airport Authority has borrowed some $11 Million dollars for thier portion of the runway expansion, and now have to pay for it. They are not generating any new business, and therefore this money has to be paid back through money collected from Airport Improvement Fee’s, which are $18.00 every time you fly to Vancouver.

We know that some 20 employee’s were let go when they went to the Airport Improvement model. We also know that the top three executives at YXS share $400,000.00 per annum in salaries. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

“In fact the Cargo Planes being built to-day can fly non-stop from New York to Beijing or Hong Kong, and there is less and less reason for them to stop for fuel.”

Sorta true. Ground transportation is cheaper than air. Send cargo to PG, pick it up or drop it off in PG. This cuts down on the distance to fly therefor less fuel required. Less fuel carried means more and heavier cargo, simple.

The fuel tanks are in, warehousing being built, when built there will be traffic. I believe the tanks and warehousing are private ventures, so someone has been planning.

Palopu, Boeing’s best freighter can only do 9065 km range at max load ( as per the Boeing website ). Since Bejing to NYC is 11,000 km… If you want to try that without refueling let er rip. And take a lifejacket with you, you’ll need it. And I’ll catch the next flight ;)

So you have to refuel somewhere. If the big airports are too crowded you look for somewhere else to gas up. And if you can pick up some BC salmon on a backhaul, I haven’t seen too many freight companies turn down backhaul freight.

Now i’m not saying these guys are gonna beat a path to our door but as Seamutt pointed out there is some big private money being tossed out here. including the land owners 8 million share of the new road. You dont spend cash like that without a reasonable expectation of return on investment, Would you?