Who owns Port Facilities/Export Terminals

[parsley]

Oh, you mean like the SWP3 terminal out at Thunder Bay jammed with Triffid flax and owned by Viterra? Ya, I think that's what you mean by old SWP co-operative gone "public". Pars

[wmoebis]

Okay Pars, Maybe that is 1 commodity I am glad we don't own right now. LOL

[malleefarmer]

Personally, I think it was better when we had the major shares in the ports because then any profits that were made for handling, cleaning, blending and sale of dockage was paid back to producers.

Thats basically what we had ABB made a takeover bid,farmers took the money, we had a single desk operator owing storage and handling statewide then viterra bought them out so we basically still have single desk.

Will post more in a moment.

[malleefarmer]

new facilities were built and upgraded and farmers got a small diviedend, farmers were on the board of the copmpanies.

Everyone seemed happy.

Now most farmers are building there own on farm storage to escape spiralling fees which is fine if you have access to domestic market ie dairys and feedlot, piggeries, but if you dont its still gotta get exported some time and go through the ports.

And how our storage was funded was through a levy on every tonne of grain sold but we % of that back in dividend.

Hope you all understand what we had.

[wmoebis]

Sounds just like us. Only here our single desk has never owned any buildings they are our marketing arm. We sold our facilities staight to the bigger companies, then they had rationalization and diversification takeovers till only a couple own all facilities from farm gate to port.

We had a say in selling off these co's and we voted to go this route. Some like it and want the big companies to take over all the grain sales too. We would sell our grain at the farm gate instead if the export position. There by taking domestic price instead of world price. We do have the USA that is a big market and is available by truck and rail but the transport cost would be prohibative for a lot of producers to access and the cost of doing buissness that far away would be very captive to those close to the boarder. I think the majority would end up selling domestic and letting the grain companies get that market share.

We also had a good deal for farmers where we had a freight rate to the port that was set very low and the gov't would negotiate and top it up to the railways. We had lobbiests that talked the gov't into the possability that it was hindering us and the gov't changed this LAW for THEM and we now pay full freight to port. This freight is a huge portion of our costs of production and marketing. If grain was sold at farm gate this cost would be hidden in our price and we would have no control on how much markup the grain companies may add to us.

Maybe now that you guys have lost your control to grain companies you could tell us how much better or worse it is. We are going to have to make these same decisions and vote on them, one day, and a little insite from your perspective might help us know how to vote when that tme comes.

PS. I think you and I both know but thanks for telling us how it is.

[Jagfarms]

Alliance Grain Terminal
Is owned by several different farmer owned grain terminals along with Paterson grain and P@H.

Alliance Grain Terminal, located on the south shore of Burrard Inlet, is a leading Canadian farmer-directed agri-business and one of Canada's largest grain handling businesses. It handles grain and grain products.