In Roman times, the legend goes, a fearsome giant used to hang around a turn in the River Scheldt in Western Belgium. The giant, named Antigone, demanded a 50 percent share of the cargo of any trade ship he found on the Scheldt.
In Roman times, the legend goes, a fearsome giant used to hang around a turn in the River Scheldt in Western Belgium.
The giant, named Antigone, demanded a 50 percent share of the cargo of any trade ship he found on the Scheldt.
If the ship's captain refused, the giant cut off one of the skipper's hands and tossed it into the river.
Then one day, a certain Brabo of Tongeren became so incensed that he engaged in horrible battle with the giant.
The fight lasted for days and all the Roman gods gathered to watch.
Brabo prevailed, cutting off the giant's hand and throwing it in the Scheldt.
And according to the tale, now commemorated in a famous statue that stands nearby, the spot became known as Hand-Werpen (throwing hands).
This was shortened to Antwerpen.
Today, water transportation remains a very profitable industry in Antwerp, Belgium.
Port of Algoma
Antwerp is inland - an eight-hour steam from the North Sea.
Yet, it's the second-busiest port in Europe by tonnage, 16th in the world.
And Antwerp (shown above in the early 17th Century and early 21st Century) is about to play a substantive role as another inland port, Sault Ste. Marie in Canada, aims to enter the big leagues of marine shipping.
Just as Antwerp acts as a maritime gateway to Europe, the plan is to make the Port of Algoma a major distribution centre for the Great Lakes region and central North America.
Local officials are saying it could be an economic game-changer, not only for the fortunes of the city, but for the entire region.
It's been three years since city council established the Port of Algoma as Sault Ste. Marie's top economic development priority.
More than 1,300 square feet on the third floor of the Civic Centre has been leased out for Port of Algoma offices that will accomodate a city-hired project coordinator, master consultants and port staff.
Last month, the city retained KPMG and AECOM as master consultants on the Port of Algoma project.
For $4.3 million, KPMG/AECOM will provide:
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a traffic study and demand forecast
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infrastructure planning
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project scoping
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stakeholder consultations
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First Nation aboriginal consultation
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environmental assessment
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financial analysis on funding for implementation and construction
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overall project management
Saultster's Millions
Of that money, $3.1 million is expected to be spent by October of this year in what all parties agree is an "extremely aggressive" timeline.
Including time worked earlier preparing the case study, the consultants are expected to log 22,000 hours on the Port of Algoma project by October.
The remaining $1.2 million of the work will be approved only if other partners (provincial and federal government, private sector and others) agree to fund construction of the expanded harbour.
The idea is to have a "shovel-ready" $120-to-$150-million project ready by next March for presentation to the New Building Canada Fund for final approval of public/private financing.
"We want to be shovel-ready in the spring of 2016. It might be a year, a year and a half after that that we're looking at completion," Jerry Dolcetti, the city's commissioner of engineering and planning, told a recent city council meeting.
Spin-off company
Last September, as part of its refinancing deal, Essar Steel Algoma Inc. spun off its aging Sault dock as a separate business entity, to be known as Port of Algoma Inc.
The firm is 99 percent owned by Essar Ports, a subsidiary of Essar Steel Algoma's parent company, Essar Global Fund Ltd.
The remaining one percent of the Port of Algoma is owned by the City of Sault Ste. Marie.
Until now, the dock's major users have been Essar Steel Algoma and Tenaris Algoma Tubes.
But Tenaris and other users are expected to eventually be forced out by Essar's projected increased reliance on marine shipping.
If financing can be secured, the Port of Algoma will rebuild Essar's existing docks and improve 440 acres of adjacent industrial land to be used for stockyards, storage, warehousing, handling, manufacturing, fabrication and other services.
As the need arises, those 440 acres of back-up land will eventually grow to 1,000.
The importance of industrial land
A key selling point for the proposed Port of Algoma is the availability of industrial land in close proximity to multimodal transportation corridors.
"This infrastructure will differentiate Sault Ste. Marie from regional and provincial competitors," said a recent report submitted to Mayor Christian Provenzano and city council by Tom Dodds, chief executive officer of the Sault Ste. Marie Economic Development Corporation.
"Industrial land adjacent to all modes of transportation is increasingly more expensive and difficult to secure in the Great Lakes region. This competitive advantage will not go unnoticed," Dodds wrote.
The end result is envisioned as a seaway-depth, full-service public marine terminal, surrounded by hundreds of acres of serviced industrial land with access to the Trans Canada Highway, I-75 and rail lines (CN and CP).
The expanded Port of Algoma is expected to handle 14 million tons of cargo a year, compared to 5.5 million tons at present.
Essar Steel Algoma's dock is currently 1.4 kilometres long, with enough waterfront land available to expand it to 3.5 kilometres.
"We've had a history of developing the idea of multimodal transportation." says Dodds. "And this particular project represents the pinnacle of, I would argue, decades of effort."
How many jobs, really?
In his report to city council, Dodds said he will be unable to project job creation and other economic benefits from the proposed port until a freight traffic study is completed.
"The effort is just getting underway," Dodds said. "Once the traffic study is complete, the community and the Sault Ste. Marie Economic Development Corp. will be in a better position to provide specific projections on employment development opportunities."
But that didn't stop Dodds from including some ambitious job estimates in his report.
He predicted, based on a 2013 report from KPMG, that it will take 1,400 person-years to build the new port.
Dodds also said that the new port will contribute up to 1,800 permanent jobs resulting from direct, indirect and induced economic benefits,.
Further, his report predicted a $228 million boost to Canada's gross domestic product.
"Benefits would include coming up of industries and logistics infrastructure in future, which could create thousands of jobs, and give a complete economic uplift to the city," said one of the slides used by Dodds in his presentation.
But Dodds' eager thousands-of-jobs prediction didn't go unchallenged.
An anonymous email
Just prior to the city council meeting at which Dodds presented his port update, an anonymous person or group, styling itself the "Harbour Engagement Enhancement Team," sent an email to members of council and the media.
The email questioned those thousands of jobs, claiming that KPMG's own figures suggest that as few as 17 permanent positions may result, and that 1,400 person-years amount to less than 500 construction jobs over a three-year building period.
"Are these thousands of jobs then merely a wish list?" the anonymous writer asked. "If we do not have concrete verifiable numbers beyond 17 potential full-time employment positions, and certainly no data on the impacts of the proposed private-sector project to work with, what is the justification for the extensive taxpayer subsidies to this project at this point in time when other pressing needs are going unmet?"
"Given the municipal, provincial and federal subsidies provided to this private-sector proposal lacking credible evidence of any public benefits, would public resources not be better spent on and more fairly allocated to local public infrastructure improvements, such as water, roads, social housing, poverty, and electricity, or internet access or health care that would benefit all citizens?"
"Furthermore... there will undoubtedly be harmful impacts associated with this proposal, including increased air and water pollution, noise, light, dust emissions, increased hospital admissions, mortality and morbidity, and further erosion of natural spaces, shorelines and wetlands in the Sault."
'Any number that you're given never turns out'
Ward 1 Councillor Paul Christian was clearly uncomfortable with job-creation estimates.
"I've got to be honest with you, I'm getting tired of looking at stuff like that," Christian said. "My experience has taught me that any number that you're given never turns out anyway. I'd much rather have the rationale behind the numbers."
"We shouldn't be looking at the specific number of jobs created so much as at the important infrastructure that we develop through this. What we're looking at here is becoming a distribution centre." countered Ward 6 Councillor Ross Romano.
Tom Dodds pointed out that the steel industry is known for creating many more indirect and induced jobs than other sectors.
"I think it's really important to understand that Essar Ports is coming at it from a fundamentally different perspective than the traditional view that we've had of ports," Dodds said. "They've had the benefit of developing a port system within India. They have an affiliation with the Port of Antwerp. So they understand conceptually and with much greater depth than many in both Canada and the U.S. would have in their appreciation of what the possibilities might be."
Why Antwerp matters
Indeed, the Sault's Antwerp connection so excites Ward 6 Councillor Steve Butland that he's been spending a lot of time looking at videos of the European port.
Essar Ports has a special relationship to Antwerp and has arranged similar links between Antwerp and the Sault.
First off, on the issue of job creation, Butland provides a potentially important observation from his video-viewing: "If we're going to employ 1,800, we have a long way to go because they [Antwerp] employ 1,600,"
But, he points out that Port of Antwerp jobs are good jobs, union jobs.
And in true Butlandian fashion, he sees a lot of alternative energy in those Antwerp videos.
"They've got solar panels on their warehouses," Butland enthuses. "They've got wind turbines. They've got nature zones adjacent to the development that are home to 92 different species of animals."
The Algoma-Antwerp connection
Under a strategic partnership agreement, the Port of Antwerp and the Port of Algoma will work together on:
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Technical collaboration for port planning and development of facilities
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Cargo potential mapping and facilitating tie-up.
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Preparation of proposal for refurbishment and expansion of facilities
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Training and consultancy services
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Both ports will mutually assist in volume growth of their businesses.
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Access to relationship with port operators and port-based companies operating in Antwerp.
Two terms that don't appear anywhere in Tom Dodds' latest update on the Port of Algoma are 'free trade zone' and 'Ring of Fire.'
Councillor Butland asked about free trade zones, speaking favourably about the Centreport Canada foreign trade zone, a 20,000-acre inland port in Winnipeg that provides significant tax and cost savings to foreign investors.
Ring of Fire
Councillor Terry Sheehan asked whether the Port of Algoma might benefit from the Ring of Fire, a huge chromite mining and smelting development proposed for the James Bay Lowlands.
Jerry Dolcetti from the city said that the terms of reference for the Port of Algoma consultants allow consideration of both the Ring of Fire and a free trade zone.
Added Tom Dodds on the Ring of Fire: "From our perspective, we see the natural synergies of the proximity of that area to port locations on the north shore of Lake Superior; the fact that there are three rail lines between here and that proposed development (CN, CP and Ontario Northland); and the fact that there is a railway that starts in Hearst and runs straight south to Sault Ste. Marie. It may prove to be the most cost-effective way to transport concentrates."
However, Dodds added that a great deal of work must be done on involvement of the Crown and First Nations in the Ring of Fire.
"We always hear about the Ring of FIre," said Councillor Butland. "The Ring of Fire could be important to us. But this [the Port of Algoma] could be our Ring of Fire....One would hope that it's bigger," he said,
Red Rock feeder port
Another interesting development is the signing of a memorandum of understanding last month between subsidiaries of Port of Algoma Inc. and Riversedge Developments Inc., the company developing the former St. Marys Paper site in Sault Ste. Marie.
Under the 15-year agreement, the two companies plan to design, build, operate and maintain a deep-water port at the site of the dormant Norampac linerboard mill in Red Rock.
Red Rock is expected to operate as a feeder port for the Sault Ste, Marie port.
The Red Rock development may also include a torrified wood pellet plant.
Both the dock and a rail spur servicing the Red Rock location require significant work to render them operative again.
'Let's be in their face'
Back in the Sault, Councillor Butland wants his fellow members of city council to push hard to ensure the money needed to build a new Port of Algoma is raised.
"I want to believe it's a game-changer for our community." Butland says.
"Let's be in their face, be it Winnipeg, Antwerp, or be it India. And let's ensure that the other parties are aware that Sault Ste. Marie is on for this. Let's put a full-court press on this one. Let's push it as much as we can."
(IMAGES: UPPER - View of the Pier of Antwerp from the Vlaams Hoofd, painted between 1614 and 1653 by Bonaventura Peeters.the Elder. LOWER - Modern-day Port of Antwerp.)
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