“We are not just expanding our infrastructure; we are investing in the future of Canadian agriculture and the baking industry,” CEO John Heimbecker said in news release.

P&H Milling Group and Winnipeg-based grain handler Parrish & Heimbecker, Limited (P&H) said the expansion comes in response to “ever-growing demands” from the baking industry.

Along with a third flour mill, which is scheduled to begin construction in March, the company will add two storage silos which it said would would handle feed ingredients like soymeal, distillers dried grains, and wheat for the mills.

The existing P&H Hamilton flour mill opened in 2017, and construction began on a second mill in 2019, which opened in 2020. This doubled its capacity, the news release said.

Further expansion “reaffirms our dedication to meeting the needs of both our valued agricultural partners and our business partners,” Heimbecker said.

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Privately-held P+H said Thursday it plans to expand to a 100-car spot, up from 50, at its elevator at Quill Lake, Sask., about 60 km east of Humboldt.

Work on that expansion, connecting to Canadian National Railway’s (CN) Margo subdivision at its site east of town, is expected to start this month for completion in November, the company said.

“The upgrade allows us to clear twice as much grain out of the facility,” P+H said in a release. “Increased shipping will provide more consistent and higher-volume marketing plans to our customers.”

Also, work will begin in August on a new rail car unloading system at the elevator, “which will allow us to unload a rail car off either track at 272 tonnes per hour,” P+H said.

That new system, due for completion in September, would also allow the elevator to unload an “improperly loaded” car or to receive cars loaded elsewhere, the company added.

P+H’s grain handling capacity at Quill Lake was expanded in 2000 from 3,500 tonnes to 9,000, and again to 21,000 tonnes in 2011 with the addition of seven new steel bins.

Separately, the company said Thursday, work is already underway on a fertilizer rail unload tunnel, able to empty a rail car at 20 tonnes per hour — along with what it described as the “first phase of increasing the speed of the facilities’ rail loadout capacity.”

The company has expanded the Quill Lake site’s fertilizer retail business in recent years, having installed a new shed there in 2016. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The Winnipeg company announced Friday it has completed a new mooring dolphin at its terminal at Goderich, Ont., as well as a new vessel-loading spout designed to cut down on dust emissions.

A “dolphin” refers to an isolated structure built on piles at a port terminal, allowing a facility to accept longer vessels where it’s impractical to build out a pier, wharf or shoreline.

The dolphin structure is used to secure and stabilize a longer vessel attending a terminal as it loads or discharges cargo, and also allows for safer manoeuvring by larger vessels in the harbour area.

P+H said it reworked its “entire site layout” at Goderich for the mooring dolphin project, noting “extensive collaboration” between the company, Goderich town staff and Goderich Port Management Corp. on the design.

The terminal’s new vessel-loading spout, meanwhile, uses digital sensors to monitor and control grain flow at the discharge end.

From the deck, P+H said, its operators are thus able to manage a “concentrated cylinder” of grain, placing it much closer to the bottom of the vessel and “reducing unwanted dust emissions.”

The Goderich terminal, which P+H has owned since 2012 when it took over Ontario grain handler Thirdcoast, is served by Canadian National Railway and has 105,000 tonnes of grain storage capacity.

P+H describes the site as a “vital link” for southwestern Ontario producers to export grain, as well as to move eastbound wheat from the Prairies to Ontario flour mills.

“These two significant investments will allow P+H to handle increasing volumes of Canadian grain while doing so in an environmentally responsible manner,” Matt Gardner, P+H’s director of Ontario terminal operations, said Friday in a release. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Winnipeg-based, privately-held P+H in September announced a deal to buy all 10 of the primary Prairie grain elevators built by agrifood giant Louis Dreyfus Co. between 1998 and 2003. The two companies have since closed that deal.

However, the federal Competition Bureau in December said it would ask the federal Competition Tribunal to make an order requiring P+H to sell either its own elevator at Moosomin, Sask., or the Dreyfus elevator P+H now owns about 60 km east, near Virden, Man.

The Moosomin and Virden elevators “were close competitors due to their proximity” along the Trans-Canada Highway, the bureau said at the time, as the companies “closely monitored each other’s wheat and canola prices and responded to competitive activity from each other by offering farmers better prices.”

The deal “eliminates this rivalry,” meaning “farmers in the corridor between Moosomin and Virden will earn less for their wheat and canola,” the bureau said.

According to documents filed Jan. 13 by the Competition Tribunal, P+H contends there’s no evidence of any alleged imminent harm to farmers, other than allegations by the bureau that the company says “are based on a misunderstanding of the grain handling industry.”

Or, as the tribunal put it, “there is a profound disagreement between (P+H and the bureau) on the complexity of the issues raised by this application and on a number of other fundamental matters, such as the main commercial imperatives underlying the grain handling business.”

(The Competition Bureau is the agency responsible for investigations and enforcement under Canada’s Competition Act. The bureau also decides whether to bring cases before the Competition Tribunal, which has federal jurisdiction to hear cases and make orders.)

In its Dec. 19 application, the bureau also asked the tribunal to allow an “expedited” process for this case, in order to have a hearing and a decision from the tribunal in place before the 2020 harvest.

But after a case management conference on Jan. 9, the tribunal on Jan. 13 turned down the request for an expedited process.

‘Not unreasonable’

Writing for the tribunal, chairman Justice Denis Gascon cited P+H’s concern that a sped-up process would create an “informational advantage” for the bureau.

As Gascon put it, P+H contends that the bureau “has already had the benefit of reviewing three expert reports” which the company submitted as part of the review process — whereas “relevant data” will still be coming in from third parties before a hearing and the bureau hadn’t yet provided any such reports of its own.

P+H also proposed a slightly less sped-up timeline and a hearing sometime in October and/or November this year, a period the tribunal describes as “after the harvest season.”

The bureau, Gascon wrote, “has not satisfied the tribunal that the alternative timeline proposed by P+H is unreasonable, unfair or impractical.”

Thus, the tribunal’s Jan. 13 decision calls for the bureau and the company to schedule discovery and pre-hearing steps that would bring the bureau’s application to a hearing in October/November.

Proposed timelines, Gascon wrote, should be filed by Feb. 17 and both parties are “strongly encouraged to include the mediation option” in setting up those timetables.

No other Dreyfus or P+H elevator was mentioned in the Competition Bureau’s December application to the tribunal — although six of the 10 Dreyfus sites are about an hour’s drive or less from at least one other P+H elevator.

Of those, the closest geographically are at Tisdale, Sask., where P+H has its own elevator as well as a Dreyfus facility. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The bureau announced Friday it had filed an application Thursday with the federal Competition Tribunal, seeking an order that grain handler Parrish and Heimbecker sell either its elevator at Moosomin, Sask., or an elevator it now owns about 60 km east, near Virden, Man.

Winnipeg-based, privately-held P+H announced in September it had made a deal to buy all 10 of the primary Prairie grain elevators built by agrifood giant Louis Dreyfus Co. between 1998 and 2003.

Those 10 included Dreyfus’ facility at Virden, along with sites at Aberdeen, Kegworth, Tisdale and Wilkie, Sask., Joffre, Lyalta, and Rycroft, Alta., Dawson Creek, B.C. and Rathwell, Man.

As a result of the deal, which closed Dec. 10, “P+H now controls both grain elevators along a 180-km stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway,” the bureau said.

“Before, the elevators in Moosomin and Virden were close competitors due to their proximity along this stretch of highway,” the bureau said, as the companies “closely monitored each other’s wheat and canola prices and responded to competitive activity from each other by offering farmers better prices.”

The deal “eliminates this rivalry,” meaning “farmers in the corridor between Moosomin and Virden will earn less for their wheat and canola.”

P+H now “has the ability and incentive to unilaterally exercise market power in the relevant markets,” the bureau said in its application. It said P+H already “no longer intends” to follow through on previous plans to expand its rail car spot at Moosomin.

The bureau’s application “seeks to protect farmers near Virden from suffering financially as a result of this transaction,” bureau commissioner Matthew Boswell said in Friday’s release.

‘Limited options’

Grain growers in and around the Virden-to-Moosomin corridor would be “left with limited options,” the bureau said in its application. For those growers, the next closest elevator would be the Viterra site at Fairlight, Sask., about 35 km south of Moosomin.

But that elevator, the bureau said, “is on a secondary road and, due to highway weight restrictions, farmers may pay more to transport their wheat and canola.”

The bureau’s application to the Competition Tribunal also seeks an order blocking P+H from buying any other primary grain elevator in the two “relevant markets” for five years from the date of the order.

No other Dreyfus or P+H elevator is mentioned in the bureau’s application to the tribunal — although in all, six of the Dreyfus sites are about an hour’s drive or less from at least one P+H elevator.

Of those, the closest together are at Tisdale, where Dreyfus and P+H both have elevators.

P+H also has an elevator at Yorkton, Sask., where Dreyfus owns a major canola crushing and refining plant that will continue to accept direct deliveries from canola growers, but the crush plant is not part of the deal with P+H. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Louis Dreyfus (LDC) announced Wednesday it has an agreement in place to sell its 10 elevators across Western Canada to Winnipeg grain company Parrish and Heimbecker.

The two privately-held firms said the financial terms are to be kept confidential on this deal, which they expect to close in the fourth quarter of this year.

P+H said the deal will allow it to offer farmer customers “increased access to more competitive offerings in grain trading, handling and merchandising, as well as full-range crop input products backed by leading agronomic solutions.”

Rotterdam-based Dreyfus, the “D” in the “ABCD” group of global grain industry players, has been a direct player in the Prairie grain handling business since 1998, when it announced it would “enhance” its presence in Canada and build its own network of primary elevators.

Over the following five years, that network was built up to include the 10 elevators at Virden and Rathwell, Man., Aberdeen, Kegworth, Tisdale and Wilkie, Sask., Joffre, Lyalta, and Rycroft, Alta. and Dawson Creek, B.C. The elevators run between 21,340 and 53,040 tonnes in capacity.

The deal announced Wednesday, however, will not include LDC’s 10-year-old Yorkton, Sask. canola crushing and refining plant — one of North America’s largest, at a crush capacity of about 3,000 tonnes per day.

LDC will also keep its St. Lawrence River grains and oilseeds terminal, a 292,950-tonne capacity facility it set up in the 1960s at Port Cartier, Que., about 60 km southwest of Sept-Iles.

Growers who deliver to any of the 10 Dreyfus elevators will still be able to use the company’s MyLDC mobile app to manage their contracts with LDC until the deal closes, a Dreyfus spokesperson said. Beyond that date, growers who deliver directly to the Yorkton crush plant will still be able to use the app with no changes to its current offerings.

“P+H has built a great business, an excellent reputation, and their culture and long-term vision are a good fit for LDC employees and farmer customers — a key factor in evaluating the transaction,” Brant Randles, president of LDC’s Calgary-based Canadian arm, said in a separate release.

The two companies’ elevator networks have little direct overlap — both have elevators at Tisdale, and P+H has an elevator at Yorkton — although six other LDC sites are about an hour’s drive or less from at least one P+H elevator.

LDC noted the deal’s closing is still subject to “satisfaction of regulatory requirements and customary closing conditions.” A Dreyfus spokesperson confirmed via email that the deal is subject to approval from Canada’s Competition Bureau.

P+H CEO John Heimbecker, in that company’s release, described the deal as “a win-win for farmers seeking a more competitive grain and crop inputs offering as well as for the stakeholders within P+H and LDC who work to support them.

“Acquiring geographically strategic assets from a global leader like LDC makes us better and stronger by an order of magnitude.”

Randles, in LDC’s release, said the company “remain(s) committed to this important market, connecting Canadian growers with local and international food markets with a greater focus on value-added processing.”

Dreyfus, like its fellow majors, has recently been up against reduced profits from sourcing and shipping grains and oilseeds due to burdensome global commodity supplies and the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China.

The company in May was reported to be considering offering equity stakes to outside investors for the first time in its history. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The privately held Winnipeg company announced Friday it will start construction this month on a 25,000-tonne capacity grain elevator on Canadian National Railway track at Dugald, Man., about 10 km east of the Winnipeg perimeter.

The grain elevator, which is expected to be complete in about 18 months, is also to include a loop track for “continuous grain loading and movement,” the company said in a release.

The elevator will handle and ship canola, corn, oats, soybeans and wheat, the company said.

P+H said its Dugald site will also include a crop input retail operation with a fertilizer plant and chemical warehouse.

The 6,000-tonne capacity dry fertilizer plant “will deliver custom fertilizer blends, including micronutrient additions, with industry-leading accuracy and consistency,” the company said.

The new Dugald site, P+H said, “will also be home to a team of agronomic experts who will leverage a full suite of seed, crop protection and crop nutrition products as well as an on-site seed treatment plant to provide area producers with crop input solutions that fit their farm.”

P+H said its input facility will also serve farmer customers of its Transcona elevator, a 17,000-tonne capacity site on Canadian Pacific Railway track in the RM of Springfield, about 20 km northwest of Dugald. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The privately-held Winnipeg firm on Monday announced it has reached an agreement with Agrium’s retail arm, Crop Production Services, to buy the sites at Sedgewick, Wainwright, St. Paul and Marwayne.

The federal Competition Bureau in September had ordered CPS to find a buyer for the four sites, which are all within about a 200-km-diameter area between Edmonton and Lloydminster.

The bureau had ordered the divestiture as a condition of its approval for CPS’ purchase of Andrukow Group Solutions, an independent crop retail chain operating mainly in Alberta.

Without the four divestitures, the bureau said at the time, CPS’ takeover of Andrukow “would lead to a substantial lessening or prevention of competition in the retail supply of urea, UAN or anhydrous ammonia in a number of local markets in Alberta and Saskatchewan.”

The retail sites at Marwayne and St. Paul, about 40 and 150 km northwest of Lloydminster respectively, were CPS retail stores. The Wainwright and Sedgewick sites, about 100 km and 175 km southwest of Lloydminster respectively, had belonged to the 18-store Andrukow chain.

The consent agreement with the Competition Bureau had called for CPS to use “commercially reasonable efforts” to close deals for the four sites within an agreed-upon time frame, or the bureau would send in a trustee to do so.

The agreement with the bureau also blocks CPS from buying similar types of ag retail and/or fertilizer assets in the Andrukow chain’s catchment area for three years — and from buying back the four divested sites for 10 years.

“Expansion into this geography and working with the experienced staff at these four new locations will be a great opportunity,” Justin Watson, P+H’s national director for crop nutrients, said Monday.

Financial terms of P+H’s deal with CPS weren’t disclosed in Monday’s release. The deal is expected to close Feb. 2.

Watson noted P+H has been “aggressively expanding its footprint” in the crop input business, putting up fertilizer plants, chemical sheds and seed facilities at its grain elevator locations.

The four retail stores being sold “have strong staff who are dedicated to serving their customers,” P+H said, adding it “look(s) forward to welcoming them into the P+H family.”

The sale clears Andrukow’s retail sites at Amisk, Camrose, Clyde‑Flatlander, Daysland, Dewberry, Fort Saskatchewan, Mundare, Paradise Valley, Provost, Rycroft, Ryley, St. Paul, Strathmore, Viking and Waskatenau, Alta. and at Marsden, Sask. to join the CPS chain. — AGCanada.com Network

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Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay on Thursday announced a $10 million “repayable investment” in the project from the AgriInnovation program, part of the Growing Forward 2 ag policy funding framework.

AgriInnovation is meant to back research and development work into new products, processes and practices for the ag and agrifood sectors, as well as projects to help commercialize those new developments. The program runs through to the end of March 2018.

At Hamilton, the program will help fund “exciting new technologies that will improve consumer confidence in wheat products,” MacAulay said.

P+H’s new “state-of-the-art” plant, the government said, will have a built-in traceability feature that’s expected to help the company identify specific product batches in case of a product recall.

The company also plans to use “the latest” technology in wheat cleaning, “to improve food safety by doing a better job of removing impurities before milling.”

Already Ontario’s biggest and Canada’s second-biggest flour miller by capacity, P+H expects to quadruple its wheat procurement from producers and add 16 full-time jobs with the new mill, the government said.

The company last December picked up a $5 million investment for the mill project from Ontario’s Food and Beverage Growth Fund. P+H itself is investing $40 million to build the mill, near its existing twin-domed grain terminal at Hamilton’s Pier 10.

The province said at that time the expansion of P+H’s Hamilton site is expected to allow the company to process 25 per cent more grain and boost its annual intake of Ontario wheat by more than 10 per cent.

The company already operates Ontario flour mills at Cambridge, Acton and Hanover, plus mills at Montreal, Halifax, Lethbridge and Saskatoon.

The company’s product lines include hard red spring wheat flour for breads, soft winter wheat flour for cakes and cookies, semolina for pasta, organic flour, rye flour and atta flour for chappati. Its Parrheim plant at Saskatoon also mills pea fractions and barley beta-glucan.

Derek Jamieson, president of P+H’s milling group, said in Thursday’s release the federal funds will support his group’s “ongoing commitment to food safety, innovation, productivity and quality” and help it “to continue to grow with our customers and support the sustainable growth of the baking industry in Canada.”

Local MP Bob Bratina said the company’s project “adds to our remarkable agricultural sector and provides the kind of development cities require for sustainable, recession-proof economies.” — AGCanada.com Network

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Writing on Jan. 2, Judge J.D. Denis Pelletier of the Federal Court of Appeal dismissed Canadian Pacific Railway’s (CP) appeal of a May 2013 ruling from the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) that favoured Winnipeg agrifood firm Parrish and Heimbecker (P+H).

The Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association on Monday hailed Pelletier’s decision as granting P+H “the ability to gain competitive access to BNSF” for U.S.-bound grain shipments.

The fact that a federal court has upheld this aspect of federally-enforced interswitching rules “introduces a modest but important element of competition in the rail sector,” Wheat Growers president Levi Wood said in a release.

The CTA decision and CP’s appeal followed an unresolved dispute between CP and P+H over rates for CP to take P+H’s grain cars from the Parrish elevator at Milk River, Alta. to the Canada/U.S. border at Coutts, Alta., about 20 km south. P+H’s grain cars would then be handled by U.S. railway BNSF.

With no deal reached on rates, P+H applied to the Canadian Transportation Agency for an interswitching order, which would require CP to move P+H’s cars from Milk River to Coutts at the “statutory” rate, $315 per car, rather than CP’s “commercial” rate, $1,373 per car.

Interswitching policy allows Canadian shippers to apply for their goods to be hauled by one railway at an interswitching rate to an interchange with another railway, which then takes the cars for the main haul.

The CTA’s decision, granting an interswitching order in P+H’s favour, was handed down before the federal government’s move last year to increase a maximum interswitching haul to 160 km, up from 30. CP last fall launched an unrelated appeal against expanded interswitching.

In any case, CP took the CTA and P+H to court, arguing, as Pelletier put it, that “one of the conditions for the making of such an order, the presence of an interchange, was not satisfied.”

CP argued before Pelletier in Ottawa on Dec. 11 that there was technically no interchange at Coutts because BNSF had no rail line at Coutts to put it within CTA jurisdiction.

“Functional integration”

Pelletier, in his ruling, noted CP and BNSF have had an agreement in place since 1928, revised in 2005, to exchange traffic at Coutts.

Under the railways’ deal — which saw 90,945 cars change hands at that point in 2012 alone — CP comes to BNSF’s yard at Sweet Grass, Montana to take northbound cars to Coutts, while BNSF goes to CP’s Coutts yard to take southbound cars over to Sweet Grass.

The CTA argued, and Pelletier agreed, that BNSF’s deal with CP gives it “sufficient rights” to track at the Coutts yard for BNSF to have a railway line at Coutts for the purposes of interswitching under the Canada Transportation Act.

CP also argued that previous CTA rulings conflict with that view — but the CTA, Pelletier wrote Jan. 2, has “refined its view of when a railway company ‘has’ a line of railway, moving away from a strictly ownership position… to a more nuanced position based on functional integration.”

For the CTA to refine its view, he wrote, is “in keeping with… Canada’s national transportation policy, which favours competition and market forces, and discourages rates and conditions which are an undue obstacle to the movement of traffic. It is entirely within the (CTA’s) mandate to refine its approach to the issue of what constitutes an interchange.”

Pelletier, in finding for the CTA and P+H, also granted costs to P+H.

“Adequate compensation”

The difference between the statutory interswitching rate and CP’s commercial rate amounts to almost $12 per tonne on P+H’s southbound grain shipments from Milk River, the Wheat Growers noted.

“Other shippers within the 160-km interswitching distance will also benefit from this ruling,” Wood said. “Having the interswitching provision improves our industry’s competitiveness, while providing adequate compensation to the Canadian railway for its portion of the haul.”

A similar ruling from the CTA already faces a similar appeal from Canadian National Railway (CN), the Wheat Growers noted Monday.

In that case, the CTA granted grain handler Richardson International an interswitching rate on grain shipments from its elevator on CN track at Letellier, Man. to an interchange with BNSF at the U.S. border at Emerson, Man.

The Wheat Growers said they hope Pelletier’s ruling for P+H sets a precedent granting Richardson and other companies the ability to access BNSF lines at “competitive” rates. — AGCanada.com Network

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