We're having a party!

The Grand Opening day has arrived, a project long in the planning receives its official debut later today at the Fairview Container Port, complete with an invasion of politicians and industry officials joining with local residents, all ready to celebrate the arrival of Canada's latest gateway to the world.

The National, provincial and local press has been keeping up to date on the developments as the Official opening date grew closer, from the Vancouver Sun, to Opinion 250 and publications further afar, the story has been that there is a major shift in direction for the Port of Prince Rupert and that shift becomes officially in place later today.

Though we'll be forgiven if we look at the National Post's description of our little burg as "a small outpost on British Columbia's wild northern coast" with an eyebrow raised, it's not quite the image that we suspect our local council and the provincial government may wish to project.

However, as they say, as long as they spell your name right, any publicity is good publicity.

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The National Post's, Financial Post section provided an interesting look at the project and its historical importance to the city, region, province and continent.

Prince Rupert's 100-year wait is over
New container terminal opens Wednesday
Nathan Vanderklippe
Financial Post
Tuesday, September 11, 2007

As a small outpost on British Columbia's wild northern coast prepares to cheer the opening of a new container terminal and all its promise of fresh wealth, it is embracing a hope that this time, history will be different.

"We often say Prince Rupert has been preparing 100 years for this day," said Don Krusel, president and chief executive of the Prince Rupert Port Authority, which will hold a grand opening today for the Fairview terminal.

The massive new development has been compared to the building of the St. Lawrence Seaway and will see Prince Rupert become the West Coast's newest nexus for the exploding Asian container trade many decades after the idea was first proposed.

"We have been blessed by geography but cursed by history," he said. "This finally puts a sword in the curse."

Tucked in the shadow of a steep wooded slope, the $170-million new terminal's three massive cranes form North America's nearest port to Asia, capable of docking the largest vessels afloat. Its backers - New Jersey's Maher Terminals LLC, Canadian National Railway Co., the port and both federal and provincial governments - like to boast that a Far East container shipped through Prince Rupert will arrive in Chicago along CN's rail line before a similar container even makes land in Los Angeles.

Perhaps more important, analysts estimate a container will cost about $400 less to ship through Prince Rupert than through other ports, a key savings that has drawn in the continent's biggest retailers. Walter Kemmsies, a senior economist with Moffat & Nichol, says those advantages will initially divert 4% of the seaboard's container trade to Prince Rupert. Aggressive growth could boost that as high as 10%, he said.

But can this town of 13,000 pull off what could potentially be a dramatic redrawing of the continent's shipping maps?

If so, it will break a cycle of failed ambition nearly a century long. Long the busiest aboriginal trading hub on the West Coast, Prince Rupert teetered on the brink of an industrial bonanza in the early 1900s when railroad tycoon Charles Melville Hays chose it as the destination for his Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, a continent-spanning line that would compete with the Canadian Pacific Railroad for the lucrative Asian silk trade.

Swept up in a wave of optimism, the designer of Victoria's Fairmont Empress hotel drafted plans for a similar landmark in Prince Rupert as city surveyors laid out enough blocks to house 50,000 on its rugged terrain.

But when Mr. Hays perished on the Titanic, the dream sank with him. Others efforts would follow the same fate, key among them the port's once-promising trade in break-bulk goods, such as lumber, which vanished when companies began stuffing their products into containers and sending them through Vancouver.

The town hopes those failures will be pushed from mind today as 500 dignitaries - among them B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, International Trade Minister David Emerson and delegations from Edmonton, Chicago and Memphis - sweep into Prince Rupert to witness what Mr. Emerson described as the "sun rising" on a new day of promise.

COSCO Container Lines Americas Inc., a division of China's largest steamship line, has already signed on to weekly service for Prince Rupert, and one or two other lines are expected to make similar announcements in coming weeks. COSCO's first ship will arrive in October, and the port expects its 500,000 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) capacity will be filled by next year.
Yet that is only the beginning. The port has already completed 90% of the engineering toward a $650-million second-phase, 1.5-million TEU expansion, and begun plans for a second container terminal that would bring an additional two to three million TEUs and catapult Prince Rupert's capacity above that in the province's Lower Mainland.

All of which is a sea change from those days, a decade ago, when laughter was the most common response to those who first proposed a container terminal here. Doubters said Prince Rupert could not work, since ports have always developed to service nearby major markets. But Prince Rupert pushed ahead, creating a new model that will see typical port facilities like distribution centres crop up thousands of kilometers away, in places like Alberta and the U.S. Mid-West.
And, with North America poised for strong container growth over the next decade, the port should have no doubt that if they build it, the ships will come, said Mr. Kemmsies.

To rewrite history, however, it will have to overcome two issues common to higher latitudes: First Nations issues and the weather.

"I don't think fuel costs going up would an issue," he said. "And everybody tells me now that the weather isn't a problem. But suppose it doesn't cooperate and there are a lot of delays in shipments. That would kill it."

Another blow could come a festering dispute with the local Tsimshian people, who have gone to court to push for greater benefits from the development. For now, the two sides have reached an uneasy dtente as they await recommendations from a federally appointed facilitator - and the Tsimshian are open enough to the new terminal that they are sending representatives to its grand opening.

Yet even Mr. Emerson, who has taken a personal role in negotiating with the Tsimshian and has been one of the new terminal's most vocal champions, admitted that issue poses the greatest risk to Prince Rupert's success.

"It's just a matter of us working in harmony to harvest the potential wealth," he said. "If we fail now it won't be because we took the wrong strategy. It's because all the parties couldn't see the North Star and work in concert to drive in that direction."

Financial Post

CREDIT: Photo from Prince Rupert Port Authority