Maritime transportation is the least expensive mode of
transportation per tons shipped.
Main commodities being ship by ports of the St. Lawrence include
grain, iron ore, steel, coal and salt.
Ocean-going ship by grain elevator in Thunder Bay
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Laker ship supplying a steel mill in Hamilton
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The economic impacts of the St. Lawrence ports and of the Seaway are
multidimensional. Generally, for every 10,000 tons of cargo handled at a port along the
St. Lawrence, half a million dollars go to the community. The main advantage of using a
port and maritime transportation lies in economies of scale. For instance
a standard Laker ship, which carries about 25,000 tons of cargo, replaces 600 trucks or
250 rail cars. It is quite obvious that without the Seaway, several large industries of
the Great Lakes regions would not be able to be efficiently supplied with the raw
materials they need (notably iron ore and coal). Transporting bulk material without the
Seaway and over such vast distances would be economically unjustifiable.
The evaluation of the economic impacts of the St. Lawrence port
system are thus better understood if we consider their linkages with industries and
distribution centers. Every commodity handled by ports of the St. Lawrence has a set of
specific linkages.
- Grain. Approximately 11 million tons out of a yearly
Canadian production of 25 million tons of wheat are exported on international markets.
This number may reach about 26 million tons by 2005. The ports of the St. Lawrence Seaway,
which handle 95% of the eastbound grain traffic, mainly export grain towards Europe,
Russia, Africa, the Middle East and South America. Grain generally arrives by train from
the Prairies to the port of Thunder Bay, a major grain handling terminal. There it can
either be transshipped to Seaway ships or transferred to the other six grain elevators of
downstream ports of the St. Lawrence. They include Quebec City, Trois-Rivières, Montreal,
Sorel, Baie Comeau and Port Cartier. The advantages of these facilities is that they are
open year-round and can accommodate Panamax ships (65,000 dwt). Baie Comeau and Port
Cartier can even accommodate grain ships of more than 80,000 dwt (even 100,000 dwt for the
latter).
- Iron Ore and Steel. Once the iron ore is extracted
from mines of the Labrador of the Mesabi Range, it is concentrated on site as pellets and
then ship by railway to the nearest port of the Seaway. Sept Iles is a port having an
important iron ore export function, while Hamilton port is an iron ore importer and a
steel exporter. Industries in this domain are generally linked to port sites, as two
important commodities for making steel, iron ore and coal, are ponderous materials.
- Coal. In 1996, the ports of the St. Lawrence Seaway
handled 4.5 million tons of coal. Most of it are used by steel mills and thermal plants
directly adjacent to port sites or having their own port infrastructures. For coal,
economies of scale are very important as coal is ponderous and not expensive per unit of
weight. Maritime transportation is thus the most efficient mode for coal shipping as a
Laker ship can hold up to 68,000 tons of coal and a train between 12,000 and 15,000 tons
(a train containing this quantity of coal would be 8 kilometers long). Ports generally
undertake two main functions for handling coal. The first involve loading the coal
directly to an ocean-going ship. Depending where you are on the St. Lawrence, the size of
the ship is limited. The second is to load the coal on a self-unloading Laker which will
meet with a Panamax (or bigger) ship where the water is deep enough (such as the Estuary
of the St. Lawrence) and unload.
- Salt. This commodity has basically two major
purposes, which are road de-icing and chemical applications. Since the Seaway is closed
during winter months, when de-icing salt is mostly used, large stock piles must be
accumulated during fall at several port sites such as Montreal and Quebec. In fact, almost
every port site along the St. Lawrence acts as a stock pile.
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