A mix of freight is keeping the Port of Thunder Bay humming heading into the later stages of the 2024 shipping season.
In releasing its September cargo statistics, the port authority said Keefer Terminal, its transloading facility, was a busy place last month in handling inbound shipments of steel rail and pipe, mining equipment, and phosphate fertilizer headed for Western and Northern Canada destinations.
The authority said Keefer bested last year’s monthly record of handling dry bulk cargo with more cargo on the way before season’s end. The primary commodity being moved is fertilizer, which is railed and trucked west to farmers on the Prairies.
Potash and grain shipments remained strong in September with the port handling the largest cargo throughput for that particular month since 2016.
“September's monthly and year-to-date potash tallies set standards not seen in the Port of Thunder Bay before,” said the port authority in a release.
Movement of major commodities through the western Lake Superior port are up across the board. Grain shipments, to date for 2014, amount to more than 4.9 million tonnes compared to 4.5 million tonnes during the same timespan last year. Potash cargoes, for the year so far, numbers more than 1.2 million tonnes compared to in excess of 1 million tonnes in 2023.
Cargoes of both general and dry bulk cargoes through Keefer is more than 115,000 tonnes up until the end of September, compared to almost 80,000 tonnes handled last year.
Cruise ship activity remains on a positive note for the local tourism industry as five vessels visited Thunder Bay in September.
