CN Rail is reporting strong movement for grain and processed grain products in the last few weeks.

The railway shipped over 650 thousand metric tonnes of grain and processed grain products for crop week 27.

David Przednowek, CN's Assistant Vice-President of Grain notes it was a solid week despite some terminal issues.

According to the weekly report several elevators in the Prairies experienced loading delays due to snow accumulation, mechanical issues, or track issues. 

Rain at port also delayed vessel loading, and a few days of cold temperatures (below -25 Celcius) in the eastern part of the prairies, which prompted CN to implement its winter train length restrictions to maintain safe operating conditions.

Overall, CN still shipped over 654,000 metric tonnes of grain and processed grain products from western Canada via carload in grain shipment week 27.

Przednowek says in general good winter operating conditions in January and some key changes to CN's operating plan resulted in strong grain movement for the month.

"We ended up moving 2.64 million metric tons of grain and processed grain products via carload out of Western Canada. Second highest January on record, the previous record best being 2.85 million tonnes two years ago, and by the way supplies back then were considerably higher."

He notes from a demand perspective customer demand for grain movement was lower than they anticipated, mainly due to the larger Australian crop which impacted the competitiveness of Canadian grain in the marketplace.

To hear Glenda-Lee's conversation with David Przednowek click on the link below.