FYI I have been keeping an eye on shipping in the North West...

FYI I have been keeping an eye on shipping in the North West Passage, hoping to spot a vessel that has departed the Port of Quebec and going to a Chinese destination.

No luck so far but identifying such vessels is very much hit and miss.

The best time to identify them is while they are still in the St Lawrence Seaway. At that time the vessel tracking app that I use, identifies ships that are underway, giving departure and arrival destinations and dates.

Although I have not identified a cargo ship that I could say is carrying spod from NAL, I have observed a passenger ship from Greenland that departed Greenland on 25 July and is now just near Herschel Island Yukon Canada.

Why is this significant?

It shows that the North West Passage is currently navigable.

For the joint venture, it should mean the window of opportunity to send spod to China via the North West Passage should have already begun or soon will.

The latest company reports have stated they will be shipping loads of up to 30,000 tonnes in the coming months.

With what we knew had been stockpiled and that NAL is producing at steady state, it is quite possible that up to 60,000 tonnes of NAL spod should be available to be shipped via the North West Passage while it is open.

I won’t try to work out how much this will save in shipping costs but I am guessing they will be cut by about 60%.

The part that I don’t know, is whether all or part of the spod being shipped via the NWP will be all allocated to PLL or shared with the joint venture.

For those that are interested, the passenger ship NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC RESOLUTION was the ship I observed transit through the North West Passage. It’s movements can be tracked on marine traffic.com.

Ideally we want to see as much of our spod going via the NWP as possible because it translates into substantial cost savings.