The Montreal Port Authority (MPA) is returning to the drawing board because it wants to obtain a turnkey solution for the expansion of activities at Contrecoeur, a decision that will postpone the commissioning of the activities of the port terminal until 2026 .
Carefully considered, this decision will not overflow the Port of Montreal and will not have a “negative impact on the economy,” assures the president and CEO of the federal agency, Martin Imbleau, in an interview with Press.
“We can say that we are starting it all over again [le processus] because it is the entire consortium that we want to qualify and not just the firm that will build the facilities, he says. It is also the operator. ”
On Tuesday, the MPA launched a call for qualifications for the design, construction, financing, operation and maintenance of the Contrecoeur project, in the southern suburbs of Montreal. The bill should oscillate between 750 and 950 million.
The qualification process will take place over three months. Subsequently, three consortia will be selected to participate in the call for tenders.
Why turn to this option when three consortia had already been qualified for the design and construction of the terminal last January? In office since the beginning of the year, Mr. Imbleau replied that some of the decisions had been taken before his arrival.
He also argues that the MPA will have more latitude.
“The process allows us to be more prescriptive in the call for tenders. You can say what you want and what you don’t want, ”says Mr. Imbleau.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, THE PRESS
President and CEO of the MPA, Martin Imbleau wants a turnkey proposal for the Contrecoeur terminal.
In the document, it says that we want a commercial strategy that generates spinoffs in Quebec, Ontario and the Midwest, which we could not do in an over-the-counter negotiation.
Martin Imbleau, President and CEO of the Montreal Port Authority
Firms such as Pomerleau, Construction Kiewit and Dragados Canada, which were among the qualified teams last January, will be able to participate in the new process. Referring to confidentiality clauses, Mr. Imbleau did not want to say if they were still interested.
Longer
The entry into service of the Contrecoeur terminal was initially scheduled for 2024 and had already been moved to the end of 2025. The 2026 horizon is the “most probable”, according to the president and CEO of the APM.
This will not compromise the $ 300 million in funding offered by the Canada Infrastructure Bank and the $ 55 million proposed by the Quebec government, he assures us.
The Contrecoeur terminal should be able to handle 1.15 million “twenty-foot equivalent” (TEU) containers annually, which would double the capacity of the Port of Montreal.
According to a study carried out by the professor of transport management at HEC Montreal Jacques Roy, “new handling technologies” could allow the port’s capacity to reach 2 million TEU containers. Subsequently, we should turn to Contrecœur, underlines the document.
Jean-Paul Rodrigue, maritime transport expert and professor at Hofstra University in New York, is not alarmed by the new deadline for the Contrecoeur project. He points out that the decision goes against what is currently being seen in the industry.
“The pandemic has led to an acceleration of investments in port infrastructure,” he explains over the phone. The ports are congested. These are assumptions, but there may be technical reasons [qui expliquent la décision]. Maybe the companies and operators who need to build [et exploiter] infrastructure have other priorities. ”
Not yet settled
The Contrecoeur project has received the green light from Ottawa. But all is not settled yet since the question of the protection of the copper redhorse, endangered species, is still pending.
Last May, the Trudeau government protected part of the habitat of this fish, on which the worksite partially encroaches. The challenge for the Port of Montreal is to try to obtain a permit from Fisheries and Oceans Canada under the Species at Risk Act. This provides only three exceptions to intervene in officially designated critical habitat.
“We are putting in place compensation measures,” replies Mr. Imbleau, when asked about it. The next steps will be on the validity of our methods. ”
In his opinion, the process should be completed in 2022.
1.75 million
In 2019, more than 1.75 million TEU containers were processed at the Port of Montreal, according to a document presented during a technical session held on November 10.