We are on the east coast of Canada, just north of the St Lawrence seaway at the scenic Saguenay Fjord. At the mouth of the Saguenay river, lies Port Alfred, where the Alcan facility handles some 5.5 million tonnes of bauxite and alumina per year. It also handles some pet coke for the aluminium works nearby, feeding no less than 87,700 full rail cars per year.
From the port, the raw materials are sent by rail to several aluminium works and refineries. Port Alfred is located in the city of La Baie, which has a population of some 25,000. Fighting the gusting winds and rain, we take the short walk from Auberge des 21 (the local four star hotel) on the fjord to Port Alfred.
Our first stop is at the office of the shipping agent, Louis Bruneau, Supervisor of the Alcan Marine Agency: “As you can clearly see we are heading for winter, meaning the period from December through April. With some 34 nautical miles to the main St Lawrence seaway, our fjord here freezes in the winter time, making this a tough journey for the bulk carriers calling at this port. We have two tugs here assisting the icebreakers to get the ships into port; but when the ice thickness increases beyond 250 mm we require the assistance of the Canadian Coast Guard icebreakers,” says Bruneau.
“The ice is often more than one metre thick, and can comprise a large percentage of fresh water ice which is harder. Ice-classed bulk carriers are the only option here during winter,” he adds. Some 30 to 40 ships call into Port Alfred during the winter season, while traffic more than doubles to some 100 vessels during the summer months. When we visited Port Alfred, two ships were unloading bauxite and alumina, and two others were anchored in the fjord waiting for their turn.
“There is always the challenge of the 11m draft restriction here. We need to get ships in on high tide and discharge enough before low tide to keep them floating. Normally this is not a problem, and there are no draft restrictions in the fjord itself. But with strong winter winds, freezing temperatures and ice conditions, you can imagine that this can be stressful from time to time. Sometimes vessels come in with too much ice from sea spray in the bow area, with especially hatch cover number one totally covered with ice. This ice has to be removed manually or using steam in temperatures that may well be minus 30°C. Removing ice from the last vessel with this problem so that cargo operations could commence cost over 100,000 dollars. Some masters do not slow down enough to avoid getting ice from sea spray on their vessels, despite our warnings, and have learned this lesson the hard way.”
Bruneau adds that they e-mail information to incoming masters about the ice conditions and some practical arrangements, such as lowering the anchors slightly in order to prevent them from being frozen to the vessel. The services of an experienced “ice advisor” to assist masters who are new to navigating the area in winter are vital to safe operations.
“Many ship masters are a bit surprised when we instruct them to turn off the engine safety switch before coming here. This is the safeguard for not overcharging the main engine, but sometimes, for shorter periods of time, the vessels need all the available power on the propeller in order to get through ice or avoid being stuck. When vessels leave again, they must ballast enough to ensure that the propeller is well below the water line,” says Bruneau. “We prefer experienced masters!”
Handling the Alcan raw materials
Our second stop is the office of Serge St.Hilaire, Coordinator of Interiors at Port Alfred: “We received 3,030,000 tonnes of bauxite, 930,000 tonnes of alumina, 350,000 tonnes of pet coke, 190,000 tonnes of caustic soda, 160,000 tonnes of bunker and finally 70,000 tonnes of fluorspar, totalling 4,730,000 tonnes in 2003. The total for 2006 will be close to 5,500,000 tonnes.”
St.Hilaire continues: “The bauxite we receive is three different sorts – from Guinea, Brazil and Ghana. We ensure that the rail cars are loaded with the right blend of these three somewhat different types of bauxite, as the four aluminium plants around here will use different blends to make the aluminium with the required specifications.”
St.Hilaire also points out the excellent cooperation with the ice breakers. It is important that the ice breakers are at the right location at the right time.
“Docking the ships is an adventure,” he continues. “If there is too much ice between the vessel and the dock, the vessel will not be close enough and will have to back out and try again. This requires skills and good nerves from especially those on the bridge, but also all others involved.
“To clear the ice can be a mess, and also, when crushed ice is turned and moved by the ice breakers, then additional ice will build on this again making the path where the vessels will move even literally harder to navigate.
“In addition, the locals here in area like to fish in the winter time, and there may be as many as 1,200 fishing sheds on the ice. They are not obstructing our traffic, but the sight is quite spectacular.”
No wonder that the Port Alfred facility was a summer time operation only until 1976. That is when the all year operations started and this essential to keep the plant running.
“We have the railroad supplying the plants on a total of 143 km of tracks. The river flooded in 1996 and the railroad had to be closed for a while as new tracks had to be laid. The railroad carries 7,540,000 tonnes of cargo a year filling 87,700 railroad cars. This is operated by 121 persons and 11 locomotives,” says St.Hilaire. When asked why there is such a large aluminium industry in northern Canada, the answer of cheap electricity is not a big surprise.
Built by and for Alcan
We are on board Federal Venture, a bulk carrier owned by Fednav and operated by Anglo Eastern, talking to the master, Captain Cedrie D’Souza: “This vessel was built in 1989 to ship alumina from Jamaica to Port Alfred all year round. It’s a very irregular ship, built to DNV Ice Class 1A. This means that we can navigate in medium first-year ice that’s up to 1.2 m thick.”
“The engine,” D’Souza continues, “is a Panamax-size one for a Handysize vessel, and the propeller is a controllable pitch stainless steel one with an oversized rudder horn to go with it. The coating system is also very good, and the deck machinery has been designed for cold-climate operations. The hydraulics are designed for 30-below operations.
“We have special filters on all the air intakes to ensure that we don’t get any of the very fluffy, powdery alumina any place where it should not be. If we get this in the engine, you may as well forget the whole machine. We have hatch cover covers to ensure that the covers don’t freeze and, very importantly, to keep the cargo dry, which is a must. Sometimes when the weather conditions are ‘hopeless’, even we take cover in sheltered waters to avoid getting too much spray ice on the vessel.
“When loading in Jamaica, we use a chute with a curtain all the way down to keep the alumina from blowing around. We carry about 36,000 tonnes of alumina per trip,” says D’Souza.
Date: 05 February 2008