G3, the company that bought the Canadian Wheat Board, is the
investor. It has strong connections with Bunge.
“Combined with G3’s existing facilities in Trois-Rivieres
and Quebec City, and our strong marketing connections, we believe G3 will
present a very competitive new option for Ontario farmers,” said Karl Gerrand,
the company’s chief executive officer.
He said it’s part of G3”s plan to become a coast-to-coast
Canadian grain business.
G3’s Quebec City grain export terminal came to the company
through U.S. grain giant Bunge, which along with Saudi Arabian firm SALIC is a
joint-venture owner of G3. G3’s Trois-Rivieres facility, formerly Les
Elevateurs des Trois-Rivieres (ETR), had been owned by CWB since 2013.
Grain exports from southern Ontario have been increasing
“for some time now,” Gerrand said Tuesday.
“We recognize time is valuable for our farmer partners,
which is why this facility has been designed to get trucks in and out as fast
as any competing terminal in Ontario.”
Hamilton’s existing terminals handled over two million
tonnes of grain, oilseeds and agrifood products in 2014, Hamilton Port
Authority CEO Bruce Wood said in G3’s release.
Bunge, which with SALIC closed its deal to buy CWB and
rebrand the joint venture as G3 at the end of July, also already operates
an edible oil refinery on port real estate at Hamilton, on Pier 11.
Other companies already moving grain and agrifood products
through their own facilities at the port include Richardson International,
Parrish and Heimbecker, Agrico, Biox Canada, Vopak, Sylvite Agri-Services and
Westway Terminals.
Richardson spent more than $5 million in 2012 on expansions
at its Hamilton terminal, including a second shipping tower for laker vessels
and a third receiving pit for grain trucks. It also built an inland terminal at
Shantz Station, between Kitchener and Guelph.
Parrish and Heimbecker, another Winnipeg grain firm, is the
owner of Hamilton’s two nine-storey-tall, 28,000-tonne capacity grain storage
domes, opened in 2011. And Agrico recently doubled its fertilizer tank storage
at Hamilton, to 40,000 tonnes.
The port’s direct access to the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence
Seaway system means Hamilton is “ideally located for agrifood exporters,” Wood
said.
G3’s neighbours at Pier 26 would include Bitumar’s asphalt
terminal and the Windsor Salt terminal, owned by German fertilizer firm K+S.
