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The potash terminal at the Port of Portland experienced a significant equipment failure late last month, impacting world markets for potash, a potassium-based mineral used to make vital agricultural fertilizer.
“On the evening of April 25, a 95-foot section of the conveyor system’s catwalk located on Berth 503 at Terminal 5 collapsed onto the deck of the berth,” says Melani Rosales, a spokeswoman for the Port of Portland. “At that time, loading operations had been ceased for several hours and nobody was on the berth.”
Although the Port of Portland’s grain terminals may be more visible and Portland has long been the nation’s largest wheat exporter, potash exports dwarf total grain shipments in volume by more than 3 to 1. Last year, ships bound for export loaded nearly 6 million tons of potash at Terminal 5, located at 15550 N Lombard St.
That potash arrives via train from a mine in Saskatchewan operated by the Canadian firm Canpotex. The scope of the operation is vast: Canpotex uses specially built railcars in trains up to 205 cars long. It sends 800 “unit trains”—meaning all the cars carry potash. Many of those trains end up in Portland, about 1,200 miles from the mines.
In 2018, Canpotex said it had completed a five-year, $150 million expansion of the terminal, allowing it to accommodate 390 railcars on site and export up to 7.5 million tons annually.
Canada is the world’s largest producer of potash, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, producing 16 million metric tons.
The disruption in supply from Portland comes at a time when the global market for potash is already distorted by the dramatically lower production from other big players.
Exports from the world’s second- and third-largest producers, Russia and Belarus, plummeted last year because of U.S. economic sanctions on those two countries. (Russia’s production dropped from 9.1 million tons in 2021 to 5 million tons last year, the USGS reports, while Belarus’ production fell even more sharply, from 7.6 million tons to 3 million tons.) The U.S. produced just 440,000 tons in 2022.
The Port of Portland expects Canpotex is working to repair the conveyor system, but that could take some months.
“For safety reasons, the berth is completely closed until further evaluation to determine the integrity of the conveyor system,” the port’s Rosales says. “Until that evaluation has been completed, the berth will remain shut down.”
In a statement, Canpotex says it will shift exports away from Portland until the conveyor at Terminal 5 is fixed. The company already ships out of Vancouver, B.C., and Thunder Bay, Ontario.
“It is expected that the impact to volumes can be largely mitigated by redirecting product to other ports in North America, with impact on costs being assessed,” Canpotex spokeswoman Natashia Stinka said last week.
The only good news is that the port, which is publicly owned, is not on the hook for repairs or lost shipping volumes. “Because of the nature of the port’s contract with Cantopex,” Rosales says, “there will be no financial exposure for the port.”