Canadian Pacific, Port of Montreal ink collaboration agreement

Class I railroad carrier Canadian Pacific recently announced that it has signed a collaboration agreement on performance and productivity with the Montreal Port Authority, which it said formalizes CP’s and the port’s ongoing supply chain collaboration.

“This collaboration agreement continues to strengthen our long partnership with the Port of Montreal, setting the stage for a cross-supply chain collaboration that improves performance and service of the Continental Gateway,” said CP Executive Vice-President and Chief Marketing Officer Jane O’Hagan, in a statement. “Our collaboration will create the most efficient and reliable routing for freight traffic moving between Europe and the American Midwest.”

This is the fifth collaboration agreement of this kind CP has inked with other freight transportation and logistics concerns in the last year. The previous one was with Port Metro Vancouver on February 22.

CP Senior Manager, Media Relations, Mike LoVecchio told LM that this agreement builds on long term cooperation between the Port of Montreal and Canadian Pacific.

“It is one of a series of collaboration agreements we have made in the last year which reflect Canadian Pacific’s goals of providing the safest and most reliable service to customers through our eastern Gateway,” he said.

He also pointed out this agreement will be beneficial for railroad shippers in that collaboration within the supply chain is key to managing increasing volumes and efficiently improving service, adding that this agreement, like the others Canadian Pacific has announced formalizes CP’s commitment to service reliability through the Port of Montreal.

In terms of the biggest competitive advantages of this agreement for CP, LoVecchio said that Canadian Pacific’s tracks already provide the most direct routing between the Port of Montreal and distribution centers in the US Midwest and Northeast.  And in a typical year, CP freight trains carry the equivalent of more than 1 million truckloads of merchandise through the Detroit River Tunnel, moving goods from Canada’s industrial heartland and trans-Atlantic trade from the Port of Montreal to the American market.”

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