(The following story appeared on the High Plains Journal website on December 19.)
WINNIPEG — Canada’s rail system is returning to normal after a month where shortfalls in the transportation system caused the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) to miss out on additional sales, a spokesperson with the CWB said.
“We did have some issue with the total capacity,” said Ward Weisensel, Executive Vice-President of Marketing with the CWB. “We could have sold more – the demand was there, but we had to say no to those sales.”
Weisensel said both of Canada’s major railways, Canadian National Railway Company (CN) and Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), had shortfalls, and fell behind. “CN was running shortfalls, but they weren’t as big as the other railway.”
He commented that the shortfalls became an issue some four weeks ago, but things have improved at this point, and he expects that the CWB will meet its sales commitments.
According to the latest Grain Matters magazine from the CWB, the grain marketer hopes to export over 16 million metric tons of western Canadian wheat, durum and barley during 2003/04. That is almost double the 8.7 million tons the CWB exported in 2002/03. The CWB hopes to have moved 40% of its total crop year program by the end of December, and 85% by the end of May 2004.