Access to Ridley Island was closed to the public on August 2, and Ridley Terminals chair Bud Smith says it was a move needed to ensure everyone's safety as the expansion of the facility takes place.
“The effort to grow our capacity requires mobilization space; storage of equipment space; potential moving of new equipment onto the site from a barge site used during initial construction; and space for crews, who during part of the project, will be working round the clock to limit our down time. In addition we are going to continue as full a regime of service to our customers as possible,” he said.
“All of this will be done with maximum worker safety procedures in hand. To ensure that maximum safety RTI and the Prince Rupert Port Authority have developed a process for limiting access to the terminal area. RTI is not prepared to risk an injury or worse for either work crews or citizens that could be caused by unlimited access to the area.”
And while this segment of the expansion is expected to be complete this year, Smith said there is still many different aspects of the expansion that will be taking place through to next year.
“The current program for expanding our capacity has three major prongs. One, we're replacing our existing rail car dumper and doing associated upgrades. That is scheduled to complete during December 2011. Two, we're improving 9 acres of land adjacent to the tank area. Three, we're doing site preparation for more storage capacity on the 35 additional acres we have leased from PRPA,” he said.
“All this work begin in the coming days and weeks and will carry on into 2012.”
Once complete Ridley Terminals will have increased its capacity from 12 million tonnes to 24 million tonnes, something brought about by the increased demand for coal overseas.