With an eye to boosting business for the waterway, the St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corp. has put a freeze on seaway tolls through its 2008, 2009 and 2010 seasons.
By holding rates and introducing other incentives, “we are setting the stage for our stakeholders to aggressively seek new business in an era of escalating costs, and to advance their business plans with a greater degree of certainty,” corporation CEO Dick Corfe said in a release Tuesday.
Other new incentives announced Tuesday by the seaway management corporation include:
- a New Business Incentive program, offering a 20 per cent discount on cargo tolls over the course of three years for applicants whose commodity/origin/destination combinations are approved as “new business,” including all containerized cargo movements from 2008 to 2012;
- a Volume Rebate Incentive program, meant to boost movement of traditional staple cargoes on the seaway, and worth a 10 per cent discount on cargo tolls for incremental volumes that meet certain criteria;
- restructured lockage fees for the Welland Canal, to encourage smaller cargo vessels and shipments to use the system, replacing the previous flat fixed charge per lock transit with a new charge based on a vessel’s gross register tonnage (GRT), to a set maximum that will benefit larger vessels; and
- a revised definition of “domestic cargo” to include all movements between any combination of Canadian and U.S. points within the Seaway/Great Lakes system, which will allow “intra-system” movements to be subject to what the corporation called “advantageous” bulk rates.
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New director
In other seaway news, the seaway management corporation on Wednesday also announced the appointment of Viterra’s director of terminals, Bill Mooney, as the grain industry representative on the corporation’s board of directors.
Mooney has worked in terminal operations with Viterra since 2003, when the company was still Saskatchewan Wheat Pool. Previously he worked for Winnipeg’s James Richardson and Sons, owners of James Richardson International (JRI) and Pioneer Grain, rising there to the post of vice-president for strategic and organizational development.
