The shipping distance from the Port of Vancouver to a port in Algeria is about 10,000 nautical miles and requires a passage through the Panama Canal.
From the Port of Montreal to Algeria, the distance is around 4,500 nautical miles.
Therefore, one would think that most of the durum from Western Canada should logically be shipped through the St. Lawrence Seaway to a customer in Algeria.
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But that’s not what happens.
Why it matters: Rail logistics drive the path of the supply chain for grain grown on the Canadian Prairies.
In the 2023-24 crop year, Canada exported about 892,000 tonnes of durum to Algeria. Most of that, 561,000 tonnes, went through the Port of Vancouver, said Warren Bohm, director of research and analysis in Quorum Corp.’s marine industry section.
Quorum, based in Edmonton, monitors the handling and transportation of grain on the Prairies.
In a presentation at the 2025 Durum Summit, held earlier this year in Swift Current, Bohm explained how durum and other grain from the Prairies are shipped to an overseas destination and the logic behind the route.
The critical factor isn’t the distance from a port in Canada to a particular destination.
Instead, it’s the distance from a country grain terminal to a port.
“Canada is big. Rail transportation can be as much as two or three times [more expensive than] ocean transportation,” said Bohm.
“Most grain moves by rail to its closest port of export, within Canada.”
In a report published in the fall of 2023, Quorum studied the cost of moving 50,000 tonnes of wheat from seven Prairie locations – from Winnipeg to Camrose, Alta. – to buyers in East Asia, the Mediterranean, India, Iran and Venezuela.
The total cost has four components:
- Rail transportation to port.
- Port handling fees.
- Re-loading grain onto a larger vessel if taking the Thunder Bay-St. Lawrence Seaway route.
- Marine transportation to customer.
Of those components, Quorum learned that rail is the largest cost.
“Rail freight costs comprise between 60 and 75 per cent of the total … cost of the grain movement from origin to final destination.”
The report was published 17 months ago, so some of the figures may have changed, but Quorum estimated that rail freight ranges from $25 to $80 per tonne:
To Vancouver, rail freight from Camrose was $50 per tonne. From Yorkton it was $70 per tonne.
To Thunder Bay, rail freight was $25 per tonne from Winnipeg and more like $70 per tonne from Lethbridge.
In the 2021-22 crop year, the average length of rail length of haul was 945.6 miles, Quorum said.
“This is approximately the distance between Swift Current and Vancouver (958 miles) or Thunder Bay (935 miles). The tariffs with CPKC [Canadian Pacific Kansas City] for those routes are $61.55 per tonne and $51.34 per tonne, respectively.”
Ocean freight for moving grain from a Canadian port to an overseas customer is significantly lower. It ranges from $25 to $40 per tonne, Bohm said in Swift Current.
Still, ocean freight rates are not fixed. If there is strong demand for shipping and a shortfall of vessels in a certain region, costs can spike, which would affect how grain exports are routed in Western Canada.
In its report, Quorum has a pie chart that illustrates how grain moves to port in Western Canada. From 2018 to 2023, only five per cent of Manitoba grain was shipped west to Vancouver.
In that same period, one per cent of Alberta grain went to Thunder Bay.
“[So] it’s really hard to push grain from Manitoba west and from Alberta east,” Bohm said.
Grain that originated in Saskatchewan went both east and west. It represented 47 per cent of grain going through Thunder Bay and 54 per cent of Vancouver’s volume.
Bohm told the audience at the Durum Summit that Swift Current is a break-even location for rail freight. Grain could go east to Thunder Bay or west to Vancouver, at a similar cost.
The share of grain going west or east could change if ocean freight rates went through the roof or if there were chronic issues at the Port of Vancouver, such as the shut down of a railway bridge in the Lower Mainland.
One example is the New Westminster Bridge, which was built in 1904 and upgraded in 1937.
“It handles about 35 per cent of traffic going into the Greater Vancouver area by rail,” Bohm said.
“The solution for this [bridge] is likely eventual replacement.”
