Turning an idea into reality
Customers needed for inland port success
By: Martin Cash
If you aren't certain what is meant by the term inland port, you shouldn't feel too badly -- you're not alone.
As one well-regarded expert in the transportation business recently said to me, in his mind it could mean everything from a glorified industrial park to a modern centre of trade and commerce for the 21st century.
With such a range of possibilities, it is significant that the province is taking the lead to form an entity, CentrePort Canada Inc., that will co-ordinate all the stakeholder interests to help make an inland port a reality near James Richardson International Airport.
Regardless of what form it may take, there has been a healthy surge of awareness that if Winnipeg is to retain (recapture?) its role as a transportation/distribution powerhouse, it will only be able to do it with a community-wide effort.
The province's designation of 20,000 acres west of the airport as an inland port will put it in line for federal money to build new roads, rail lines, sewers and utilities around the airport in competition with several other Canadian cities.
The Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce has adopted the inland port concept as a primary initiative, indicating a willingness from the business community to make it a key economic development piece of the coming years for the city.
From the Winnipeg perspective, the idea of an inland port is to leverage the air, rail, road and sea assets that are already here into something that would provide a value-added service to help shippers or distributors or manufacturers or producers gain some kind of market or profit advantage.
Whereas Winnipeg does not really have any special advantages that would make it a hotbed for biotechnology or the development of video games (not to say Winnipeggers are not capable), the city does have history, heritage and a cultural predisposition as a transportation centre.
It makes sense.
Bill Morrissey, one of the cadre of senior managers cut loose by the new owners of Standard Aero, was recently recruited by the chamber to help lead an effort to figure out what kind of services companies might need from an inland port in Winnipeg, and who those companies are.
It is just that kind of strategic planning that noted U.S./Canada trade expert Stephen Blank, who was in Winnipeg this week, argues is essential for a successful inland port.
Blank said most cities (probably including the River City at this point) are largely engaged in "polishing their assets." But regardless of how excellent the Halifax harbour is, or how extensive Kansas City's railroad network is, or how integrated and multi-modal Winnipeg's transportation infrastructure is, that does not make it an inland port.
"What you need is entrepreneurial vision and a business plan and a business plan begins with a customer," Blank said. "You can talk about inland ports... but the business is someone who wants to use the facility to bring in goods. You have to know who is pooling goods, where they are going and where they are coming from."
That is essentially the kind of intelligence Morrissey and his chamber initiative will try to gather while CentrePort marshalls public-sector resources to make sure the road and rail shipping facilities are up to snuff.
"We need to understand what the market is demanding and make sure the investment (that is eventually made) is what is required," Morrissey said.
No initiative like this is without risk. Blank cautions against subscribing to the old W.P. Kinsella adage that if you build it, they will come.
But on the other hand, Barry Prentice, the transportation and logistics guru at the University of Manitoba, counters with, "If you don't build it,you will guarantee that they won't come."
Back in the 1990s, something called Winnport was formed to try to develop something that might have been called an inland port.
When efforts to attract air cargo from Asia into Winnipeg failed, the enterprise leased its own plane and tried do it all itself, but it failed for all sorts of reasons.
This time, the city is taking a more mature, modern approach: Figure out the value proposition first, and do it with the public sector and a broad-based group of interested parties working together from the start.
The assets still need to be polished, but caution should be applied to Winnipeggers don't get dazzled by what we think we've got because it's only worth something if someone else wants to pay to use it.
martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
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