May 23, 2018 – John Phair, The Observer – Sarnia’s Cargill Grain Terminal has been in operation for 90 years but most people in the area probably don’t know what happens at the busy facility.
The company recently held an open house and invited some of its neighbours and community partners for lunch and an overview of what Cargill does at its Sarnia site.
Terry Barros has managed the local terminal for 13 years and always finds it amusing when people think he works at a flour mill.
“At the core we are a grain business, there’s no ifs, ands or buts about it,” he said.
“But when you think of Cargill you have to understand that it’s much more than just a grain terminal in Sarnia that has been loading grain boats for the last 90 years.”
He said the scope of the company’s operations are so extensive that Cargill is involved with 20 per cent of the food products purchased by consumers. Regionally, Cargill operates a beef processing plant in Guelph as well as a chicken processing plant in London that supplies all of the McDonald’s restaurants in Canada.
Cargill, said Barros, is also involved in the production of of sugars, starches, flavours, cooking oil, chocolate, as well as a plethora of consumer goods such as de-icers and animal and aquatic nutrition.
The company is one of the world’s largest privately-owned enterprises and is owned by the Cargill and MacMillan families. With head offices in Minneapolis, Cargill has operations in 70 countries and employs more than 170,000 people.
The company ships more than 225 million tonnes of dry product per year and operates more than 6,000 ports around the world.
“It’s a very big company with lots of reach, but the one thing that bothers me is that, because we are a private company, we don’t blow our own horn very much,” Barros said.
“Cargill does a lot of good things but doesn’t say much about it.”
He said Cargill supports food programs in 14 countries that feed more than 600,000 people daily. Among them is Sarnia’s Inn of the Good Shepherd, which received a $25,000 donation from Cargill at the open house.
Barros said the Sarnia terminal’s storage capacity is approximately 154,000 metric tonnes, which equates to six million bushels.
The site began operations in 1928; Cargill purchased the terminal from Maple Leaf Mills in 1988.
“There is a lot of business that goes on here and most people don’t know what it is,” Barros said.
He noted that during the busy harvest season from July to November, 225 semi-trucks are unloaded at the site daily.
“Essentially, most of the grain that is harvested across Southwestern Ontario is delivered to this site by trucks.
“We ship out about 88 per cent of that grain on lake vessels. A little bit goes out by rail, and some by truck, depending on the market.”
Forty-two per cent of the product that comes into the Sarnia terminal is winter wheat, 48 per cent is soybeans and about 10 per cent is yellow corn.
“That equates to about 420,000 acres of crop that goes through this facility each year,” said Barros.
“The primary role of this facility is as an exporter and that is very important to the livelihood of farmers.”
Barros noted that farmers have become more efficient in their production practices and they produce more than the region can consume.
“Some of our grain has to find an export market,” he said, adding they load about 30 vessels a year at the site; each vessel holds approximately a million bushels of grain.
“Our total grain handle is about 700,000 metric tonnes per year, but we are in a growth mode and our long-term objective is to do 850,000 metric tonnes.
The Sarnia Terminal has 14 full-time employees.
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