Cargill AgHorizons Canada plans to close one of its smaller grain elevators, at Birch Hills in north-central Saskatchewan, by the end of this year.
The agrifood firm’s Canadian grain handling arm said Monday it would stop accepting grain for delivery as of Dec. 1 at Birch Hills, about 35 km southeast of Prince Albert, and would close the facility effective Dec. 31.
But Cargill’s Birch Hills crop input facility and office will remain open, the company said, and fertilizer products will continue to be delivered direct-to-farm.
“We will continue to serve customers’ needs through (Birch Hills) and all grain shipments will be handled at our neighbouring Clavet or Nicklen Siding facilities,” Blaine Duncan, Cargill’s farm service group manager for Birch Hills, said in a release.
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Clavet, about 20 km southeast of Saskatoon, is a more distant option; producers near Birch Hills could expect about a two-hour drive to haul grain. Nicklen Siding, about 30 km north of Tisdale, would be a little over an hour’s drive.
The closure of the Birch Hills site, Duncan said, stems from the company’s “commitment to maintain a safe, efficient and cost effective network of farm service centers across Western Canada.”
Furthermore, the Winnipeg-based company said, its Birch Hills site was “faced with the challenge of not having any rail service between the months of December and April.”
Canadian National (CN) runs a line from Melfort west to Birch Hills, which is then connected to Prince Albert via OmniTrax’s Carlton Trail Railway.
Birch Hills is also Cargill’s third-smallest Saskatchewan elevator, with a handling capacity of just 7,200 tonnes. Clavet, by comparison, has a capacity of 42,000 tonnes and Nicklen Siding, over 13,000.
