To cap off 2022, Huddle sat down with some of the key figures in Atlantic Canada’s business community – folks representing everyone from tourism operators to energy producers to the startup world.
We asked each to reflect on the challenges, successes, and surprises that most impacted their industries and the lives of Atlantic Canadians this year.
In the first of several conversations we will bring you before the new year, Huddle reporter Alex Graham sat down with Craig Estabrooks, the president and CEO of Port Saint John.
His answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What is the coolest thing that happened in your industry in 2022?
I’m going to say containers.
Because, for us, it’s Area 506; it’s what we’ve done with containers to bring people to our waterfront. We’re really proud of the Saint John harbour and the views that you get.
With the way when they built the container village, you’ve got this beautiful platform where you can go have a sandwich and enjoy a beverage and look out at the harbour. You can look at the television screens for a movie, or if you’re watching a sporting event, or if you’ve got live music happening on the stage, you’ve got the best vantage point.
Then, you’re looking at the left-side facility that’s seen unprecedented growth in the container industry. It has put hundreds of people to work on the waterfront in very good-paying jobs–that has really helped propel our middle class.
And while there are lots of challenges in the global economy and what’s to come, I think we need to take comfort in the fact that 2022 was a big, big year. It’s put us down this path of working with partners to create more economic and social prosperity for our region.
Q: How do you think your industry most impacted the lives of Atlantic Canadians in 2022?
It’s not just us having the impact, it’s really the port and its partners. We’ve had operations in our harbour, potash for example, is a great story. Potash is brought by rail from Saskatchewan to Saint John and exported. Potash is a major component in creating fertilizer and Nutrien, who’s the player that has the presence in Saint John, along with their supply chain partner Canpotex, they’ve got great language in how they frame what they do about feeding the world in a sustainable way.
When you look at the downstream effects of the movement of goods through a port, I think that’s a really interesting story about how Atlantic Canada is helping feed the world.
I think from a jobs standpoint there’s no question the Saint John and the New Brunswick economy is doing much better these days compared to five-to-10 years ago. I like to think the port has had a role in that and that [the port] will have a major role in growing the economy and making sure people have access to a good job, with a very sustainable wage, that will allow them to have a good quality life.
Q: What is the most significant challenge your industry faced in 2022. What impact did it have?
One of the biggest challenges around infrastructure is, ironically, because we work in a port that deals in supply chain, is supply chain constraints around building things. We were very cognizant of that in 2022.
We’re in the last full calendar year of construction of a $205-million modernization project that that got announced formally in 2016 and started the heavy construction in 2020. That’s building our second container berth, operated by DP World on the west side of Saint John. That project will be done at the end of Q1 in 2023 and that berth will be operational.
This year was also the year that we constructed our intermodal rail facility that’s been extremely busy here in Saint John. And our truck gate, of course, is a modern piece of infrastructure that is going to be very key for the fluidity of that terminal. So, 2022 was a major year of construction for us, and getting all the right pieces in place.
I will say that, at times, it’s been like constructing a house while living in it.
Last year we did 86,000 TEUs, twenty-foot equivalent containers. We’ve had steady, steady growth last number of years. This year we hit 100,000 TEUs by September and we are on track to do between 140,000-150,000 TEUs–all while we’re in a major construction zone over on the west side.
It has been it has been a year of remarkable opportunity and tremendous challenges accommodating that new growth, while still being in primarily a construction zone.
I do want to touch on the cruise industry, too. At the beginning of 2022, we were we were in the midst of a new wave of lockdowns and the future was very uncertain for yet another lost tourism cruise season. There were a lot of unknowns to begin this year. We worked very closely with Transport Canada, Public Health, our local public health authorities, the City of Saint John, and the community surrounding us to see what a safe cruise resumption would look like.
The early part of the year was all about: can we put the right measures in place to give local citizens and tourists comfort that our region is a safe place? We’re really proud that this year we welcomed back cruise ships to Saint John, and Atlantic Canada. We all welcomed them back. We’re very, very proud of what we were able to achieve in the cruise industry.
Anyone that’s living in Saint John knows we had one really fantastic new product in this region called the Area 506 Container Village. We had concerts and a continuous round of events with a fantastic season of weather that added a vibrancy to what we call Uptown Saint John, in a way with that I think is pretty unprecedented.
We came together with Ray Gracewood and his team and we turned a tent that used to have a couple people in there selling things to cruise passengers into a vibrant space that people wanted to be in. I think it’s a real model for ‘the art of the possible’ and doing something very quickly that can have a tremendous benefit for the community.
Q: Are the impacts of Covid on the Port finally over?
That’s a bold prediction.
I think from a cruise standpoint, we take great comfort that the restart was done in a sustainable way. I think the pandemic will forever change, for generations, the way we look at public health and how sacred it is when an illness of that airborne nature can infect so many people and cause so much hardship. I think we’re all going to be a lot more conscious of that.
I would never say it’s an ‘end’, but from a tourism standpoint, I think 2022 is the year activity picked back up. And we do see an upward trend of more cruise ships coming into the port next year and more tourists in general visiting Atlantic Canada.
Q: Port Saint John hit milestones with TEUs and cruise passengers, what does that mean for the maturity of the Port, and its future?
We think the future’s bright because we’ve spent a lot of time working with partners to build this.
It would be it’s impossible to predict the future in terms of exact numbers and what’s going to happen, but what we take a lot of comfort in is the relationships and partnerships that we forged.
So, on the container front, for example, we have DP World, a world-class operator, here in Saint John.
They’ve had a great relationship with our unionised workforce, the International Longshoremen’s Association. We’ve formed a new strengthened relationship with that ILA 273 workforce as well. We have a workforce partnership committee that meets regularly. The province of New Brunswick helped fund this group with two training simulators and that allows both the employer and the union representative to train faster.
I think we’ve had better alignment than we had for a long, long time.
I don’t want to forget our rail partners as well. Our port is very, very proud of the CP Rail’s east coast advantage in Canada. A lot of the growth that we’ve experienced is because of the work that CP Rail’s done.
We’ve got all the partners in place, and same with cruise: you’re only as good as the products that the operators that you have. The vendors at Area 506 Container Village, the tour operators like Aquila and Ambassatours and others in our community. These are the folks that make the experience special for the cruise passengers and keep our area in high demand.
Q: What else was important to your industry this year?
We did initiate the Community Liaison Committee that other ports and industries have successfully implemented. Getting closer to the priority neighbourhoods, the community, and Indigenous groups that we’re working on our journey of reconciliation with, really getting closer to municipal and local governments that are closest to citizens.
We started the CLC in 2022. We’ve had many years of doing more in all of those respects, but we see that embedded in our DNA going forward and getting that honest feedback about how we’re doing, and how our port operations affecting the lives of people that live around us.
Alex Graham is a reporter with Huddle, an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.
