CPKC had another strong week of grain delivery during Week 10 of the 2024-25 crop year, moving nearly 623,500 tonnes of Canadian grain and grain products October 6th through 12th.
"Throughout Western Canada, we're seeing strong shipments of Canadian whole grains to markets like Thunder Bay, Vancouver for export from Canada as well as through eastern Canada and the United States and Mexico," explained Elizabeth Hucker CPKC's Assistant Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Bulk Commodities. "For the last number of weeks, we've moved in excess of 600,000 metric tons of Canadian grain and grain products."
In fact, Week 10 was the fifth straight week with more than 600,000 metric tonnes moved on the CPKC Canadian network, which has not happened since fall 2022.
"These are strong movements when we compare to last year," she noted. "As your listeners will recall, we were in a drought condition last year which had impacted the crop size throughout Western Canada. There is a strong crop. It's not a bumper crop, but it is certainly a wonderful crop to see across Western Canada and here at CPKC, we are ready to move that."
As for car order fulfillment, Hucker says CPKC has been staying in very close contact with its customers to understand where demand is and when they need cars, so it matches up with vessels in Vancouver and Thunder Bay, as well as orders throughout the domestic North American continent.
"Since we've moved past the most recent labour situation in Vancouver, things have been moving well," stated Hucker.
And with winter weather conditions possibly arriving at any point now into November, how has the recent seasonal to above average conditions across much of Western Canada impacted grain movement?
"Certainly good weather helps in the transportation of grain through Western Canada," she said. "We are actively monitoring what winter might look like, and we actually on September 27th released our winter report. As we move up through harvest, and move the grain that we are right now, we're actively working to plan our winter operating conditions. But right now, with the sun in the sky, things are moving very well. No weather impacts right now either at loading as we move it across the country, or as things are being unloaded at the different ports."