Port Of Prince Rupert Snags a Major

Monday, May 14, 2007 07:42 PM

CN announced today it has signed a contract with COSCO Container Lines Americas, Inc., under which COSCO will become the first steamship company to route Asian freight over the new Port of Prince Rupert container terminal and CN’s North American rail network.

COSCO will commence service via the Port of Prince Rupert and CN for container shipments between Asia and the North American markets starting in the fourth quarter of 2007.

James M. Foote, CN’s executive vice-president, Sales and Marketing, said: “CN is delighted to have COSCO as its first customer to call on the Prince Rupert container terminal, a new North American gateway for Asian trade.

“Our partnership with COSCO, and Prince Rupert container terminal operator Maher Terminals of Canada Corporation, is clear recognition of the competitive advantages of the new port facility and CN’s rail network reach and superior service offering. The Rupert-CN-Maher combination will inject meaningful port-rail-terminal capacity into the global supply chain, and will offer shippers the fastest, most efficient and most cost-effective routing for Asian traffic destined to and from the interior of North America.”

Phase 1 of the Prince Rupert terminal project will have initial throughput capacity of 500,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent containers) annually and is part of a broader plan to build a facility capable of handling two million TEUs per year.

The Manager of Corporate Communications was ecstatic when we reached him. Barry Bartlett said this is extremely good news. It is the last piece of the puzzle. For us it eliminates the skepticism that some people have had in this region about the container port. We are happy with the progress of Maher, CN and the Port of Prince Rupert. “We sat down with them and said if you could build the facility of your dreams in an intermodal container port, what would it look like “. That is what we built them.

To start Bartlett says, it will mean three ships a week starting this fall, two trains a day each way to Prince Rupert with about 400 to 500 containers on each train. That is just the start he says, we are hoping to grow that to 8 trains a day just from this one company.

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Posted on Monday, May 14, 2007 07:42 PM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: owl on May 14 2007 8:06 PM

Snagged a very nice client. Congrats. The second phase of the port looks like it will be a go with this type of client using the port.

Posted by: DPJ on May 14 2007 8:49 PM

Awesome. Now lets get the runway expansion going ($$$ from the province???)

Posted by: Palopu on May 14 2007 9:16 PM

They like to throw the numbers around fast and furious. A few points to ponder.

The containers ships that were to unload at Prince Rupert were supposed to be the largest container ships in the world that could hold 12,500 TEU'S per ship load. If you were to get three of these per week you would get 37,500 TEU'S per week, or 1,950,000 per year. So that doesnt work when you are talking about 500,000 TEU'S per year. So are we to beleive that the big container ships are not going to Prince Rupert??, or are the numbers just wrong.

I suspect that smaller ships will be the order of the day, because the big PANAMEX Container ships can carry 12,500 TEU'S which would mean the equivelant of 25 Trains at 500 TEU'S per train. It would take CN Rail a least 10 days to move 25 Trains out of Prince Rupert, and therefore it appears that they will have smaller ships arriving 3 times per week which will enable them to move out the Containers at 2 Trains per day. This will also elimate some of the storage space that would have to be available to accomodate loading the Panamex Containers Ships with outbound Containers. It also avoid some containers being delayed in Prince Rupert for 8 to 10 days. Using the Panamex Container Ships would only require 40 ships per year or one ship every 9 days to handle 500,000 TEU'S per year.

Once they go to 2 Million TEU'S per year you are looking a approx 11 Trains in each direction, plus the traffic that presenlty uses the Railway at least 2 Trains per day in each direction, which give you roughly 13 trains per day in each direction, and of course (because this is a single track Railway) you now have gridlock. Any problems with the track between Prince George and Prince Rupert would mean that all Container traffic would grind to a halt, and you would have immediate congestion.

It will be interesting to see how this **Saga** unfolds.

Posted by: YamaDooPolCat on May 14 2007 10:48 PM

Boy I'm glad Palopu is not in sales of anything. After reading the good news story I was happy , but after reading Palopu's side of the story I guess I better not run out and buy a new kitchen stove just yet.

Looks like Prince Rupert and Maher are a bunch of idiots that couldn't even run a Wiener King wagon!

Posted by: Chadermando on May 14 2007 11:08 PM

Interesting numbers. I think I'll ponder that next time I sit at a rail crossing waiting for all those trains. lol

Posted by: ICEMAN on May 15 2007 9:55 AM

Right on

Posted by: Andyfreeze on May 15 2007 3:33 PM

Palopu is correct in his assumption that having only one(1)set of tracks will be a sticking point for the BIG ships.
Waiting is not something they do well.
The company I worked for up until retirment, has still not fully commited to Prince Rupert because of that reason.
And there are others.
The Port itself is fine,but the single tracking is not.
A derailment,washout,etc.will cripple the entire operation and that will lead to serious wait times,demurage charges, and so on.
It is all about infrastructure and they have not gone far enough with that.
I sincerely want to see this port operation succeed for the sake of Prince Rupert itself, but I think they have "missed the boat" here.
It will be interesting to see how it all evolves as time goes on.