SAULT STE. MARIE, ON – Establishing a commercial port in Sault Ste. Marie will create an opportunity to lay out a heavy industrial park in the city’s west end that will entice new manufacturers to town. City of Sault Ste. Marie CAO Tom Vair said that’s the thinking behind the business case for a proposed dock facility in the general vicinity of Algoma Steel’s Export Dock on the St. Marys River. On the opening week of a new Great Lakes shipping season, city staff and its consultants, HOPA Ports, provided councillors on March 23 with the first glimpse of their strategy and plans on a long-awaited business case for the first phase of a $200-million port facility. The municipality is negotiating a long-term lease with Algoma Steel to secure 216 acres of brownfield property with an option to add 950 acres down the road. For more than 120 years, the property had been a dumping ground for heaps of Algoma’s blast furnace slag. That’s all changed with the company’s transition to electric arc furnace steelmaking last fall. The land can be opened up and made ready for industrial tenants.
Vair is convinced a marine, road and rail-connected multimodal hub will be a magnet to bring new industrial players to the Sault to set up shop around a new and improved dock.
To help make it happen, the city and its economic development staff are leaning heavily on HOPA Ports. The Hamilton-Oshawa Port Authority manages multi-modal hubs in Hamilton, Oshawa and on the Niagara peninsula. The land and tenant companies they oversee move more than 11 million tonnes of cargo annually. The Sault would like to replicate what HOPA generated at the Port of Hamilton. “They showed us all the different businesses that have co-located on their property in order to utilize the port facilities,” said Vair. He added it’s not out of the question that HOPA could be the Sault’s port operator. “They bring a lot of expertise and experience to the table, a lot of credibility in port operations, so that’s the thought process.”
Constructing a public port has always been an in-again, off-again proposition since 1954. What’s often halted momentum has been lack of senior government buy-in. This time, Vair feels circumstances have changed. With Ottawa and Queen’s Park on the same page when it comes to rebuilding the Canadian economy by investing in large nation-building infrastructure and supply chain projects, Vair is confident they can secure as much as 80 per cent of the required funding to advance the project. The remainder would come from a combination of the city, HOPA and industrial park tenants. The business case presented boldly predicts that port-generated business will produce almost 2,500 direct and indirect local jobs within five years and create $343 million a year in economic activity. The construction jobs alone will range between 1,400 and 1,800 over a 24-month build-out.
There’s a sense of urgency to advance the port project this time. The city expects the port development will ease the sting of the community losing 1,000 jobs at Algoma Steel as layoffs began late last week. “Having that cluster of companies,” said Vair, “that would be utilizing and attracted to the port would make up that (employment loss) number and help to diversify the economy and be an engine for the future for the community.”
The preferred spot to build is the vicinity of Algoma Steel’s Export Dock, next to the main shipping channel in the St. Marys River. The dock is in dire need of an upgrade. A local towing company bought a retired lake freighter in the late 1980s and sunk it to create a dock face to moor vessels. Vair said making improvements there would speed up their entry into the market rather than building from scratch. The playbook calls for the dock walls to be refurbished and space cleared for cargo laydown area. Better lighting, security and safety systems would be installed along with a rail transload area constructed and a spur line running onto the property. There will be berthing space for two to three vessels. Any underwater dredging or blasting to deepen the approaches to the dock is the subject of an ongoing analysis, Vair said. “At this time, we believe we can get going with what’s there and have port operations commence in the near term.” Based on workshop sessions with various industrial players, Vair is convinced that there’s enough untapped regional business to be had that the Sault could have one of the busiest ports in Ontario within five years, behind Hamilton, Thunder Bay, Goderich and Windsor.
Of the 22 listed companies and organizations that support the port concept, including local steel pipe manufacturer Tenaris and North American cement and concrete producer Amrize (formerly Lafarge Canada), Vair said many of them have said they would use a modernized port. The mix of inbound and outbound cargoes could involve value-added steel products, salt and aggregate, corn and soybeans, fertilizer, forest products and mining-related equipment that could be staged in the Sault for transport to nearby gold mines in places like Dubreuilville and Wawa.
That would be of interest to the rail carriers servicing the Sault, namely the Huron Central Railway and Watco, who could play a project funding role if port-related cargoes result in more freight moved on their respective lines. “We have talked to them and there is a willingness to invest as the port develops,” said Vair.
Soo Today
Bulgarian-flagged Bogdan at the Algoma Export Dock in 2025. [Gordy Garris]
Read more at this link: https://www.sootoday.com/local-business/after-decades-of-starts-and-stops-sault-ste-marie-says-conditions-are-right-to-build-a-commercial-port-12051080
