By Andrew Macdonald
There was no response from Richie Mann to an email asking if the proposal for a $300 million Melford container terminal at the Strait of Canso is dead.
I gave Mann — a former provincial politician and marketing executive with the terminal — ample time to answer the email sent Thursday afternoon.
First announced in 2005, the container terminal was planned to welcome its first container ships in 2008. That obviously did not happen.
Today, there are too many things against continuing with plans to build a terminal in Melford. Those things include the expansion of the berth at the Southend Container Terminal in the Port of Halifax, making it the largest berth over 800 metres in Eastern Canada.
Also eroding the competitive nature of Melford was the arrival last year at the Halifax port of ultra-class vessels in the 15,000 TEU capacity. (A TEU is a measurement to record container boxes and stands for 20-foot equivalent units.) The ultra-class ships can also now sail into New York, after a bridge was raised in recent years. That port is the epicentre of container cargo movements on the entire East Coast of North America.
Also working against a Melford development are container terminal projects in Quebec City and Montreal, as well as expansion at the Port of Saint John in New Brunswick, which is also served by three rail lines, including CN, CP, which can connect to Montreal, and beyond. A third rail line connects to the Boston States.
A number of East Coast ports are also dredging or digging for more berth for vessels.
I should add the above developments also do not bode well for a container terminal in Sydney, a dream of former Cape Breton Regional Municipality mayor Cecil Clark.
For sure, it would be a tough slog to get the railway and the province to spend over $100 million to fix a broken rail line.
Mann’s silence on whether Melford is dead in the water is telling.
Mann has missed every time since the grand announcement of the Melford project in 2005.
The Melford container terminal was planned for a 315-acre site near the Strait of Canso town of Mulgrave, land assembled in the early 1970s by then-Premier Gerald Regan for a failed oil refinery proposed by promoter John Shaheen.
The container terminal idea was announced to grand media coverage in 2005, but building plans have missed every significant timeline, since Melford proponents announced the lofty goal 15 years ago. As it stands, there has been no media coverage since 2018, and even an official website for Melford’s terminal project is dead; a link to its website can’t be found.
I relied on two official Melford web links, one on the website for Guysborough Municipal County, and another link on Wikipedia.
The last article I filed on Melford was in 2018, when terminal proponent Richie Mann stated shovels would be in the ground that year.
When the terminal project was announced in 2005 it was first billed to be in operation in 2008. Granted, that was the start of a global credit crunch and recession that severely impacted the movement of container vessels.
Here is what the Notebook reported in 2018, having talked with Mann, a former highways minister from 1993-97 in the provincial government of John Savage:
“Backers of a 315-acre container terminal in Melford on the mainland side of Nova Scotia’s Strait of Canso are saying shovels could be in the ground this year to begin constructing the terminal and logistics park.
“Proponents of the Melford Atlantic Gateway shipping terminal have issued a request for qualifications for engineering firms to design and build the $450 million terminal. The news is the first public development in years about the shipping terminal.”
Mann, who was Melford’s marketing vice-president, said the design request was significant, adding, “We’re at a point where we’re moving forward and preparing to put the dots in place.
“We need to go to the next level and towards a final design to make sure all the work we’ve done is relevant and there are no gaps in what we’ve done and what we need to do.”
He said the terminal would need a spur rail line connecting to the existing line between Truro and Linwood.
“We’ve acquired all the land for that and dealt with 100 landowners, involving getting 60 acres from the landowners.”
For years, Melford and Mann have avoided mentioning a date to start the ambitious terminal undertaking, but in 2018 they were then talking about a time frame for construction.
“Yes, we could put shovels in the ground if all went well,” Mann told The Macdonald Notebook. “That would be our desire and we’re looking for a two construction season.”
A pivotal component of the terminal is negotiating shipping line contracts for cargo carriers.
“We’ve been in talks with shipping lines for a long, long time and there is obviously a lot of interest there. We are getting at a very critical point. Obviously, we’re optimistic about where this is heading or we would not be issuing calls for engineering firms.”
I reported in 2018 that a dozen engineering tender packages were issued to international engineering firms, some with Nova Scotia offices.
A March 15, 2018, tender date had been established by Melford, but there have been no media reports updating that news development since then.
In 2017, Seattle-based SSA Marine, a global terminal operator, was named as the planned operator of the Melford terminal.
The last media interview Mann gave was an email statement in November 2019 to Canadian Sailings website. The article was written by Halifax’s Tom Peters.
Mann said that in the summer of 2019 Melford contracted Port Hawkesbury Paper to clear over 600 acres of the proposed terminal site. “We have engaged an engineering firm, BergerABAM of Seattle, to redesign Phase 1 for optimum efficiency and cost,” he told Peters.
Mann said construction of the rail line that would connect the terminal to the Cape Breton and Central Nova Scotia Railway and the first phase of the logistics park is intended to commence simultaneously with terminal construction, the trade journal reported.
“Melford continues to be recognized as an ideal location for a modern-day, container terminal,” Mann said. “The natural advantages, coupled with the ability to overcome many of the challenges faced by existing terminals in North America, provides the basis for industry interest. The ever-increasing prevalence of large vessels (now many 22,000-23,000 TEU size in service and on order) is presenting significant land-side issues at many ports. Melford, which will be purpose-built to accommodate large vessels, will eliminate many of the issues,” he said.
“Discussions continue with major lines and the proponents remain optimistic with respect to developing a world class container terminal at Melford,” he added.
