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Duluth Hosts the 2024 NSA Summer Seminar

Thursday, August 1, 2024
filed under: News

There was a definite déja vu element to the 2024 National Sunflower Association Summer Seminar, held in late June. This year’s annual event took place in Duluth, Minn., located at the very western tip of Lake Superior and the Great Lakes.
        During the latter 1970s and early 1980s, an era when U.S. sunflower seed production rapidly reached unprecedented highs, the twin ports of Duluth and Superior (Wisc.) played a major role in the industry’s advancement. Located just 400 miles from the North American continent’s geographic center, the twin ports served as the point of debarkation for millions of tons of sunflower seed bound for export, mainly to western Europe.
        The flow of sunflower seeds through Lake Superior, the other Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence Seaway and then across the Atlantic began in the early 1970s. It grew in mid-decade — and then really took off in 1978 through 1980. Sunflower seed exports from the twin ports hit nearly 1.25 million (short) tons in 1978, followed by 1.39 million tons the following year and then 1.38 million in 1980. The 1981 total was 1.47 million short tons.
        Then, in concert with both declining U.S. sunflower acreage and the diminishing European market for U.S. seeds, exports from Duluth/Superior dropped dramatically. “In 1989, sunflower seed exports through the Twin Ports hit rock bottom with zero short tons for the season,” noted an article by Julie Zenner in the Spring 2024 issue of North Star Port, magazine of the Duluth Seaway Port Authority. “This was followed by sporadic activity over the next 15 years. Bulk sunflower seed shipments through the Twin Ports ended for all intents and purposes by the mid-2000s.”
        “Everything has to be containerized” in today’s world, noted John Sandbakken, National Sunflower Association executive director, in the same article. “The bulk of the oil is moved by rail in tanker cars, and confectionary seeds are all processed, cleaned and bagged, so sunflower seeds and products are no longer being shipped as bulk cargo in a ship.”

        Will Duluth/Superior someday renew its status as a “player” in the transportation of U.S. sunflower? That remains to be seen, of course. But, the Seaway Port Authority believes it has a feasible entry point: Duluth Cargo Connect.
        Duluth Cargo Connect, the port’s maritime container-handling operation, is based at the Clure Public Marine Terminal. Clure Public Marine Terminal is the only breakbulk and general cargo maritime freight facility in the harbor. It covers 120 acres at the center of the Duluth-Superior harbor, with dock faces on three sides at seaway depth of 27 feet. It includes five general cargo berthed and on-dock rail with direct access to four Class 1 rail carriers: BNSF, Canadian National, Union Pacific and CPKC. Four tracks along the dock wall allow for direct cargo transfer between ship, truck and/or rail. Nearly 500,000 square feet of warehouse space is augmented by more than 65 acres of secure outdoor ground storage.
        Lake Superior Warehousing is an independently owned business that operates the Clure Public Marine Terminal and associated warehouses under contract with the Duluth Seaway Port Authority. Its president, Jonathan Lamb, was a speaker at the June NSA Summer Seminar.

        Lamb outlined both the benefits and challenges of container shipping. He said only two Great Lakes ports — Duluth/Superior and Cleveland — currently have government approval for this method of shipment. There are two types of shipping scenarios: (1) port-to-port and (2) a feeder service scenario.
        As of 2023, liner service between Duluth and Antwerp, Belgium, began operations. “Liner service” refers to a shipping service that operates on a regular schedule, visiting one or more ports using one or more ship. That’s in contrast to chartered vessels being used for a specific shipment or cargo typically connecting two ports on a non-recurring basis.
        The liner service between Duluth and Antwerp offers Upper Midwest shippers several benefits, according to Lamb. First, it provides vessel sailings linking to northern Europe direct by water. It also allows shippers to avoid coastal congestion/reduction of land transportation distances; offers cost efficiencies; and, likewise, holds promise for the expansion of sourcing and sales markets. Spliethoff, a major worldwide container shipping company headquartered at Amsterdam, conducted eight voyages of liner service to Duluth in 2023.
        As of 2024, the Duluth Seaport Port Authority and affiliates like Lake Superior Warehousing have several ongoing container-related initiatives, Lamb related. They include (1) more-frequent liner services with northern Europe, (2) monthly liner sailings with the Mediterranean, (3) a UK Corridor initiative, (4) feeder service with Canadian coastal connections like Montreal, Halifax and St. John, (5) extension of the St. Lawrence Seaway shipping season, and (6) additional U.S. Custom and Border Protection-approved ports on the Great Lakes.
          “The time will come when containers on the Great Lakes will become more regular; we’re just not there yet,” Lamb told his NSA Summer Seminar audience. — Don Lilleboe