Both terminals are operated by Termont. Viterra’s grain terminal will continue operation, the Port of Montreal said.

The strike is the latest in a string of limited work stoppages at the port as negotiations between the Maritime Employers Association (MEA) and CUPE Longshoremen’s Union, Local 375. Most recently, workers spent 24 hours off the job between Oct. 27 and 28.

Wages and work-life balance have been among key issues cited by the union.

In a statement on Oct. 28, the union said Termont is targeted because it’s the only company at the port to “modify schedules in a punitive way.”

“Termont is provoking longshore workers and their local by using schedules that have negative impacts on work-life balance,” said Michel Murray, CUPE representative. “Let’s resolve the issues around work schedules, and then I am confident we can resolve the rest.”

The Maritime Employers Association yesterday said it was asking federal Labour Minister Steven Mackinnon to appoint a special mediator to “break the deadlock.”

According to the union, the strike would affect 40 per cent of container traffic, and 15 per cent of the total volume handled at the port.

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The Grain Workers Union and the Vancouver Terminal Elevators’ Association reached the tentative agreement to get Canada’s harvest to market, Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon posted on X on Friday.

According to a memorandum of settlement posted to Facebook by the Grain Workers Union Local 333, workers will vote on the deal by Oct. 4.

The two sides had agreed to MacKinnon’s request to resume negotiations alongside federal mediators after workers walked off the job last Tuesday when talks broke down amid a deadlock over benefits.

—Reporting for Reuters by Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru, with files from Geralyn Wichers

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A strike would hit 36 ports that handle about one-half of U.S. ocean imports. That could affect availability of a range of goods from bananas to clothing to cars shipped via container, while creating weeks-long backlogs at ports. It could also stoke shipping cost increases that may be passed on to American voters already frustrated with housing and food inflation, according to logistics experts.

The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) union representing workers at 36 ports from Maine to Texas and the United States Maritime Alliance employer group appear to have hit an impasse over pay. The current six-year contract expires at midnight on Sept. 30.

A strike at all East Coast and Gulf of Mexico ports would be the first for the ILA since 1977.

The White House said it is not trying to help broker a deal, as it did last year during West Coast talks, and a Biden administration official has said the President would not use his federal powers to block a strike.

Ports in the negotiating group handled $37.8 billion (C$50.9 billion) worth of vehicle imports during the 12 months ended June 30, 2024, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. The Port of Baltimore, Maryland, leads the nation in car shipments.

Auto parts are also a key import on the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico, with shipments from Europe more difficult to reroute than those from China, logistics experts said.

The ports also lead the U.S. in shipments of machinery, fabricated steel and precision instruments.

Three-quarters of the nation’s banana imports from countries like Guatemala and Ecuador land at ports on the East and Gulf Coasts, said Jason Miller, interim chair of Michigan State University’s department of supply chain management.

A strike also would affect container exports of soybeans, soybean meal and other products and would have a significant impact on chilled or frozen meat and eggs, said Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition.

The $18-billion-a-year (C$24.2 billion) U.S. beef and pork export market and the $5.8 billion (C$7.8 billion) poultry and egg export sector relies on refrigerated containers that cannot sit idle for long.

About 45 per cent of all waterborne U.S. pork exports and 30 per cent of beef exports were shipped via East Coast and Gulf Coast ports in the first seven months of this year, said U.S. Meat Export Federation spokesperson Joe Schuele.

More than a quarter of all U.S. egg and egg product exports and around 70 per cent of all poultry meat exports are shipped from ports along the East and Gulf Coasts, according to Customs data and the USA Poultry & Egg Export Council.

Retailers account for roughly half of all container volumes. Many U.S. retailers already have rushed in shipments of year-end holiday goods.

Though the Gulf Coast ports of Houston and New Orleans are major oil and gas shipment hubs, those commodities would remain largely unaffected by a strike involving more labor-intensive container cargo. The same applies to coal exports from Norfolk, Virginia, experts said

—Reporting for Reuters by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles and Karl Plume in Chicago.

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Video from CityNews Vancouver shows workers picketing outside of Viterra’s Cascadia terminal.

On Sept. 21, Grain Workers Union Local 333 issued a 72-hour strike notice to terminal operators represented by the Vancouver Terminal Elevators Association (VTEA).

Affected sites including Viterra’s Cascadia and Pacific Terminals, the Richardson International Terminal, the Cargill Limited Terminal, the G3 Terminal Vancouver and Alliance Grain Terminal according to a notice from the Shipping Federation of Canada. Unaffected sites include Fraser Grain Terminal and Prince Rupert Grain Ltd.

“I spoke with both GWU and the Vancouver Terminal Elevators’ Association yesterday. At my request, parties have agreed to resume negotiations alongside federal mediators,” said Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon on X.

Commodity groups urged the federal government to take action to keep grain moving.

“Access to export markets is critically important for the Canadian canola industry,” said Canola Council of Canada president and CEO Chris Davison in a statement this morning.

“A work stoppage at the Vancouver grain terminals will cause significant financial and reputational harm at a time when the whole industry, from farmers to processors to exporters are already facing significant market challenges and headwinds.”

In a news release yesterday, Grain Growers of Canada said the terminal elevators at the port received a bit more than half of all grain produced in Canada last year. Citing Canadian Grain Commission data, it estimated a work stoppage would halt nearly 100,000 metric tonnes of grain arriving each day.

—Updated to add statement from labour minister.

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On Sept. 21, Grain Workers Union Local 333 issued a 72-hour strike notice to terminal operators represented by the Vancouver Terminal Elevators Association (VTEA). According to a letter posted to the union’s Facebook page, workers will walk off the job on Tuesday morning.

Affected sites including Viterra’s Cascadia and Pacific Terminals, the Richardson International Terminal, the Cargill Limited Terminal, the G3 Terminal Vancouver and Alliance Grain Terminal according to a notice from the Shipping Federation of Canada. Unaffected sites include Fraser Grain Terminal and Prince Rupert Grain Ltd.

In a news release, Grain Growers of Canada said the terminal elevators at the port received a bit more than half of all grain produced in Canada last year. Citing Canadian Grain Commission data, it estimated a work stoppage would halt nearly 100,000 metric tonnes of grain arriving each day.

“GGC is calling on the federal government and Minister of Labour, Steven MacKinnon, to use all tools available to them to ensure parties reach an agreement before a work stoppage occurs,” the organization said in the news release.

“Without intervention, Canada’s international trading reputation will continue to suffer, leading to the loss of key global markets and customers.”

The union, in the letter to members, alleged that the VTEA had put “very little effort” into negotiations last week, had been slow to respond to proposals, and at time of writing, had not produced a counter offer to its last proposal.

“It is the VTEA’s move,” the union said.

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Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called the strike “a brazen attack on freedom of navigation and global food security.”

Zelenskiy said the vessel was on its way to Egypt. Zelenskiy said there were no casualties.

“Ukraine’s food deliveries to African and Middle Eastern countries are critical,” Zelenskiy said in a post on X.

“We will continue to make every effort to safeguard our ports, the Black Sea, and food exports to global markets. Wheat and food security should never be targets for missiles.”

An industry source told Reuters the grain vessel was struck in Romanian waters near the mouth of the Danube river in the Black Sea overnight.

Dmytro Pletenchuk, a spokesman for the Ukrainian navy, told Reuters the grain vessel was not in Ukraine’s grain corridor at time of the strike. He said the vessel was in Romania’s maritime economic zone.

Ukraine is exporting about four million tonnes of grain a month via its Black Sea shipping corridor, which was set up in August 2023 after Russia pulled back from the Black Sea Grain Initiative brokered by the United Nations and Turkey.

Ukraine’s corridor hugs the western Black Sea coast near Romania and Bulgaria.

Ukraine is one of the world’s leading grain producers and exporters.

—Reporting for Reuters by Olena Harmash, Pavel Polityuk and Yuliia Dysa.       

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That included 2.18 million tons of wheat, 553,732 tons of corn and 454,641 tons of barley, the data showed.

Ukraine’s UGA grain traders union said this month that overall grain and oilseed exports totalled 4.3 million tons in August, up from 4.2 million in July.

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UGA said that included 2.2 million tons of wheat, 794,000 tons of rapeseed and 646,000 tons of corn.

Ukraine typically sends about 95 per cent of its grain exports via its Black Sea ports.

Agriculture Ministry data on Wednesday showed that Ukraine’s grain exports in the 2024/25 July-June season had jumped to 7.2 million metric tons as of Sept. 4 from 4.9 million by the same date of the previous season.

That included 3.8 million tons of wheat, 2.3 million tons of corn and 1.1 million tons of barley.

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Low water levels are slowing export-bound barge shipments of grain and oilseeds from the Midwest farm belt for a third straight year, making U.S. exports less competitive in a world market awash in supplies – just as farmers are set to harvest a record soy and large corn crop and as prices hover near four-year lows.

The U.S. Coast Guard said in an email it has received reports and responded to several groundings over the last week along the Greenville-Vicksburg sections of the lower Mississippi River.

American Commercial Barge Line warned that customers should expect one to two day delays for river shipments “due to reduced navigable space in certain areas,” the company said on its website.

Sandbars are already starting to show on the Mississippi River at the Memphis, Tennessee, river gauge, according to barge sources. Last October, this stretch of the river fell to an all-time low of -12.04 feet, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Prediction Service.

The water level at Memphis is lower than it was last year: It is forecast to drop to -7.5 feet by Sept. 18, NOAA data shows.

Towing and draft restrictions have been rolled out, which are limiting how many barges can move and how much volume can be loaded onto them, said Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition. If conditions worsen, the Coast Guard said it may implement further vessel and tow restrictions.

Barge rates are soaring – making it more expensive for overseas buyers to source U.S. grain. Rates for barges coming from the St. Louis, Missouri, area were 65 per cent higher in late August than the three-year average, according to Steenhoek and USDA data.

Such low river levels come despite heavy rains during this year’s growing season, which resulted in flooding and excessively wet fields across wide swaths of the northwestern Midwest.

But now, abnormal dryness and drought conditions are intensifying across the southern Plains and Tennessee and Lower Mississippi Valleys, creating a rapidly developing flash drought situation, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

“The secret of our success on the global market has always been lower transportation costs,” Steenhoek said. “This further diminishes our competitive position.”

– Additional reporting by Tom Polansek

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A total of 2.069 million tonnes of grain have moved through the port on the northern shores of Lake Superior during the shipping season-to-date, up 14 per cent from the same time the previous year.

Potash shipments also continued to exhibit strength, with May’s potash volume reaching nearly 260,000 tonnes, which also marked the second highest monthly volume for the commodity in the past two seasons.

Other notable cargo movements in May included the arrival of steel pipes at Keefer Terminal and a shipment of petroleum, the latter being the second liquid bulk import of the season. This return in liquid bulk imports, after an absence last season, was said to signify a continued positive shift in the Port’s cargo diversity.

Overall, a total of 58 vessels visited the port in May, surpassing last season’s monthly high of 56 ships recorded in December. Notably, approximately one-third of these vessels were “salties,” or ocean-going ships.

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An estimated 10.5 million tonnes of grain moved through the shipping corridor during the season, with wheat accounting for 6.5 million tonnes of the total. Wheat movement was up by 28 per cent compared to 2022, and Canadian wheat accounted for just over 90 per cent of the wheat shipments.

Canola shipments were up by 6.5 per cent on the year at 666,464 tonnes.

However, soybean shipments fell by 35.4 per cent at 1.5 million tonnes, while corn movement dipped by 7.0 per cent at 1.4 million.

Total cargo movement, including mining and processed products along with other miscellaneous cargo hit 37.6 million tonnes, which was up by 3.4 per cent on the year. Notable changes included a 14.0 per cent increase in coal at 2.0 million tonnes and a 1.9 per cent increase in iron ore to 6.3 million tonnes.

The 2023 St. Lawrence Seaway shipping season was one of the longest on record, running from March 22 through January 7.

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