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CentrePort links with Chinese firms

By: Martin Cash

Wednesday, Sep. 19, 2012 at 8:51 AM | Comments: 0

Ken Gigliotti / Winnipeg Free Press archives CentrePort has joined forces with a transportation company and a tech partner.

AS far as infrastructure goes, some new tenants have built facilities in pre-existing industrial parks and a highway is under construction, but there's not much else at CentrePort Canada yet.

But behind the scenes, there is a lot going on.

This week, CentrePort CEO Diane Gray signed an agreement in Shanghai with SinoTrans, the largest logistics and transportation company in China.

Another signatory was CentrePort's technology partner, Invent IOT, a Chinese company that has developed a specialized RFID (radio frequency identification) technology in partnership with CentrePort that promises to streamline the handling of shipping containers.

Gray said the deal with SinoTrans and Invent IOT is about creating a new logistics platform that would serve the purposes of small- and medium-sized importers in China as well as Canadian exporters to China, in particular commodity exporters from Manitoba.

Among other things, the agreement will address the issue of the availability of containers for back-haul to China, an issue Gray has stressed will be a key to developing freight-handling business at CentrePort.

SinoTrans is a huge, state-owned entity that has 150,000 employees and influence throughout the global transportation industry.

"To get a partner like SinoTrans to work with us on this, given the amount of global trade that they are involved with -- and in particular, trade between China and North America -- is significant," Gray said.

The use of the RFID technology addresses issues such as timeliness, quality control and security for Chinese importers.

A pilot project with Manitoba soybeans was launched earlier this year, and agricultural commodities is the initial market to be targeted. But ag commodities are typically shipped in bulk, not in containers.

For various reasons, Chinese importers like to use containers, Gray said.

Canadian exporters might be happy to oblige, but it's much more expensive. And since the commodities are priced globally, the shipping costs have to be globally competitive.

"What we know is that in order to find a happy medium between the price point of bulk shipments and the desire for containerized product, we have to streamline and reduce the logistics costs," Gray said.

And it's made more expensive when there are no empty containers on hand to load -- in Winnipeg, for instance.

Gray said there is room for improvement in the costs of making containers available in Winnipeg and the potential to match the loaded container that's coming in from China with a back-haul load to that country.

One Winnipeg logistics professional said he has experienced the scenario in which a Winnipeg customer would send a truck all the way to Chicago just to bring back an empty container for a shipment.

"It's horribly inefficient," he said.

Such a logistics platform could help to attract greenfield development at CentrePort. The Internet-based RFID-tracking platform will be launched in Winnipeg before the end of the year.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca

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