The way forward for the grain elevator on the Port of Halifax stays murky because the port continues with an bold growth geared toward rising its cargo and cruise ship companies.
Kim Batherson, basic supervisor of Halifax Grain Elevator Restricted, mentioned her massive storage facility that’s been in operation since 1924 dangers dropping its export pier berth to make method for an enlarged delivery container platform.
Batherson mentioned her firm’s lease expires on the finish of 2026, and clients want solutions quickly on whether or not they can proceed to retailer and ship commodities akin to soybeans, milling grain and wooden pellets by way of the one facility of its sort within the Maritimes.
“I do really feel like they (the port) are options,” she mentioned in an interview late final month. “I do hope that we will give you one thing that allows them to proceed their growth of the container pier, however nonetheless permits us to do what we do right here.”
The grain elevator has 365 silos that may retailer as much as 140,000 tonnes of grain at a time, Batherson mentioned, including that final yr it dealt with 500,000 tonnes price of enterprise. “If the port takes away our capability to export they might be taking away 60 per cent of our enterprise,” she mentioned. “We’re not going to be a viable enterprise anymore.”
The port’s 50-year plan, launched in 2022, contains filling within the elevator’s export docking berth the place ships are loaded, to permit for the growth of the port’s cargo enterprise.
In a latest assertion to The Canadian Press, the port authority mentioned it’s in search of an answer that “helps ongoing operations on the grain elevator and continued port growth plans.”
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It mentioned that it has been assembly with provincial and federal representatives in addition to with these within the agricultural and forestry sectors and Halifax Grain Elevator Restricted. The port authority added that discussions have been ongoing and “no selections have been made.”
Batherson and a number of the elevator’s key clients say they’re working out of time to plan for subsequent season’s harvest.
Soybean farmer Invoice Biggs mentioned Maritime farmers have to know what could occur earlier than the top of this yr. “We plan our crop rotation six months prematurely so we will order issues akin to seed,” mentioned Biggs. “Most farmers order earlier than the top of December.”
Biggs, whose farm is situated simply exterior Wolfville, N.S., mentioned farms in his space of the Annapolis Valley produce as a lot as 3,000 tonnes of soybeans for storage and export every year. The overwhelming majority of that tonnage, together with the tonnage of some farmers in New Brunswick and P.E.I., is exported by way of the Halifax grain elevator, he mentioned.
The lack of the Halifax facility, Biggs mentioned, would pressure farmers to ship by way of Montreal, rising prices. “If we misplaced the Halifax grain elevator altogether it’s positively going to harm the soybean business within the Maritimes,” he mentioned.
The urgency can be felt by Veselin Milosevic, COO of Nice Northern Timber Holdings, whose firm exports wooden pellets to the European Union by way of the grain elevator’s amenities on the port.
“It’s essential to our enterprise in varied methods, one among them being the precise storage,” Milosevic mentioned. “We’re a bulk exporter and with out the storage and export terminal we simply can’t be in enterprise.”
He mentioned his operation in Higher Musquodoboit, N.S., strikes greater than 100,000 tonnes of wooden pellets every year, with solely lower than one per cent of manufacturing offered regionally.
With out the Halifax facility the one choice is the port facility in Belldune, N.B., which is a number of hours drive away, Milosevic mentioned.
“Transportation is the killer to exporting wooden pellets, should you don’t have an area resolution, say inside a 100-kilometre radius out of your manufacturing plant, you principally are out of enterprise,” he mentioned.
Batherson mentioned it’s a matter of the port realizing the importance of the elevator to its clients and the Atlantic area as an entire. “It’s not nearly what Halifax Grain pays the Port of Halifax in lease yearly, it’s about the entire enterprise that goes by way of right here,” she mentioned.
Earlier this summer time, Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston additionally weighed in on the significance of the elevator.
“That’s been an ongoing dialogue for a while, that grain elevator is extremely necessary to our province and we’ll struggle tooth and nail to maintain it,” the premier mentioned.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
