While the Port of Thunder Bay will not likely be impacted by steel and aluminum tariffs threatened by the U.S. government earlier this week, there could still be implications.
Although U.S. levies would increase the cost of Canadian steel south of the border, port chief executive officer Chris Heikkinen said it’s hard to judge what impact that would have on steel shipments at the port, which are mostly imports from Europe.
“But there’s no way to speculate if it’ll go that way or not,” he said. “I don’t think there’s an alternative for the (steel) product that is handled at Keefer Terminal and I don’t think there’s a comparative product developed in Canada. So I don’t see much of a risk.”
Heikkinen said the uncertainty that’s being created and the Canadian economy are a concern.
“But anything can happen, of course,” he said. “Meanwhile, at the port, we’re not panicking over what’s being proposed.”
Earlier this month, the Port of Churchill received $80 million from the federal and Manitoba governments to finish work on the Hudson Bay Railway and to continue redevelopment of the Port of Churchill. The port is touted on its website as being a route to eliminate “time-consuming and high cost” transportation through the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes.
Heikkinen says he is not overly concerned about that.
“There’s a lot of constraints to using that port and that system,” he noted. “The continued and growing use of our Thunder Bay port demonstrates its importance and its viability. The reliability of our port in our system speaks for its future.”
The port is involved in a large capital investment program to develop a new laydown area at Keefer Terminal to increase capacity to handle commodities like steel and project cargo.
At the end of the shipping season in 2024, Heikkinen called volumes of key cargoes handled at the port “modern records” helped by inbound and outbound potash and phosphate fertilizer.
“It’s a record that in this generation we haven’t seen in decades,” Heikkinen said. “A significant rise in potash volumes shipped from the port’s dry bulk terminals nearly doubled in tonnage from the same month last year.”
