By Leo Ryan, AJOT Sparked by sustained world demand for commodities and oil and gas, notably in China, and despite recent slower growth in major economies, breakbulk, project cargo and heavy lift activities are generally back on the upswing in Canada. The ports most involved include Vancouver, Thunder Bay, Hamilton, Windsor, Toronto, Oshawa, Montreal, Bécancour, Sorel, Halifax, and Saint John. The overall trend, nevertheless, remains uneven and volatile, as reflected in a 35% increase in breakbulk traffic in Halifax in the second quarter of this year and a 5.7% decrease in breakbulk at Port Metro Vancouver in the first seven months of 2011. “We are seeing quite a lot of activity from one end of the country to the other,” said Maurice Vezina, Executive Vice-President of Gillespie-Munro, a leading Canadian freight forwarder based in Montreal. More so than on wind energy developments, Gillespie-Munro is focusing on opportunities in the oil sands sector and in what Vezina calls “hands-on niche mining projects”– particularly in northern Quebec, northern Ontario and at Kitimat in northern British Columbia, where a planned huge $5 billion LNG terminal was recently granted a licence to eventually export natural gas to Asia. Referring to northern Quebec, he said forwarders were looking closely at various ocean shipment solutions in light of limited rail capacity. As always, world oil prices are closely monitored when measuring prospects for further substantial expansion in the Alberta oil sands. With the benchmark price for oil recently hovering above $90 a barrel, this augurs well for present and future oil sands projects – considering the ‘tipping point’ of feasibility is estimated to be prices below $70 a barrel. For FALLine, a division of Fednav International Ltd., project cargo has been an important activity for decades, notably encompassing shipments from northern Europe with destination port calls to Sorel on the St. Lawrence River and beyond into the Great Lakes. “We ship a wide variety of general cargo and heavy lift parcels, which are mainly voluminous such as beer tanks, windmill blades and the like,” said Liner Manager Dennis Pfeffer. “The characteristics of our current fleet means FALLine can only ship heavy pieces up to the capacity of the shore crane located in our load/discharge ports,” he said in an interview. “However, with growing demand for shipping heavier pieces on our trade lane, Fednav is considering augmenting its fleet with multi-purpose vessels equipped with heavy gear in order to add expertise and flexibility towards our loyal customer base.” Philip O’Brien, Vice-President Marketing, Breakbulk of Quebec Stevedoring, suggests that the Quebec government’s multi-billion dollar, 25-year Plan Nord has “tremendous ramifications for project cargo.” “Before you move bulk in large volumes, you will need the components to set up the iron ore and other mines,” he said. Shipper interest is strong, said O’Brien. “We are quoting a lot, including on an ocean route from Antwerp to Sorel as opposed to Houston and trucked or railed up. FALLine’s monthly service offers competitive savings.” Since May, a new type of cargo has been moving through the Port of Trois-Rivières, with Logistec Stevedoring working with GE Energy to ship giant wind towers from the St. Lawrence River port to markets in the U.S. Midwest. GE Energy purchases the wind towers manufactured by Marmen, a Trois-Rivières based company. GE Energy had been moving the wind towers to the Midwest by alternative means until Logistec approached the company to use the Port of Trois-Rivières. All told, eight shipments through the Great Lakes to the Port of Menominee, Michigan and carried aboard BBC Chartering vessels have been planned for this year. The towers are transported to the port from the Marmen plant by Bellemare Transport Int’l trucks. Each shipment comprises 42 sections occupying about 18,000 cubic metres of space. Each section varies in weight from 29 to 55 tons. “Phase 1 of the strategic mode