At the midway point of the 2023–2024 shipping year, grain shipments appear to be moving at a good clip.
“In the last 12–18 months, we’ve seen some really good performance from both of the railroads, said Quorum Corporation’s Mark Hemmes. “The exception was the last four or five weeks, and that was largely driven by the huge cold spell that came in right after the New Year.”
Manitoba got a touch of that cold spell, but it was especially cold in Saskatchewan and Alberta, where it lasted a full two weeks and temperatures dipped as low as -50 C.
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“The railways have a really hard time moving traffic when it comes to cold weather,” said Hemmes.
Hemmes was speaking about the state of the grain shipping industry at the CropConnect conference in Winnipeg on Thursday, Feb. 15.
While that cold snap had a temporary effect on the movement of grain, Hemmes said the railways did a solid job of dealing with it.
“It was a really good recovery,” he said. “We were thinking that it was going to take them a month to get back into shape. But it was maybe two or three weeks, and they were back up to running in pretty good fashion.”
Hemmes said that while the railways have made some improvements in recent years, the smooth sailing this year is largely attributable to a smaller crop.
“It’s a little easier on the railways, I think. That’s been really helpful to them to be able to move things as well as they have, even during that extreme cold weather.
When asked if volumes were a little light because producers were holding back in the hopes that grain prices would improve, Hemmes said he wasn’t seeing any evidence of that.
At the end of December, the railways had about 35 per cent of the crop, which is a little low. But Hemmes attributed that to price increases from both railways between August and October 2023.
“But it wasn’t as big a deal as I thought,” said Hemmes. “Normally, at the end of December, we’d be at about 38 per cent.”
Keep an eye out for our full-grain shipping update in next week’s Co-operator.
