Four companies in the Pacific Northwest Grain Handlers Association operate under a single collective bargaining agreement with the dockworkers’ union. Longshoremen have worked without a contract since a one-year agreement expired Sept. 30.
Columbia Grain Inc.
Based in Portland, Columbia Grain is owned by Marubeni Corp., one of Japan’s trading powerhouses. Columbia, founded in 1978, operates a grain elevator at the Port of Portland’s Marine Terminal 5, a sprawling industrial complex on North Lombard Street. On April 10, firefighters doused a blaze in one of the 125–foot silos.
Columbia supplies the terminal from a network of elevators and rail hubs across Washington, Montana and North Dakota. The company sends grain, pulses and oilseeds to Asia, East Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Latin America.
Louis Dreyfus Commodities
LD Commodities Inc. is a Netherlands-based arm of Louis Dreyfus Group, a French global conglomerate. LD owns a Portland grain terminal on the Willamette River’s east bank, north of the Steel Bridge. Some civic leaders have long lamented the structure for blocking Rose Quarter development.
LD, which employs more than 35,000 in 55 countries, also owns a Seattle terminal covered by the bargaining agreement.
Temco
Temco is a 50-50 joint venture between Cargill, an agricultural and industrial giant, and CHS Inc., a grains, food and energy company merged from numerous farmer-owned cooperatives.
The venture operates two terminals included in the current talks: the Cargill Irving Elevator, on the east bank of the Willamette River north of the Broadway Bridge, and a Tacoma facility. It also owns a terminal in Kalama, Wash., not covered by the bargaining agreement. Cargill, founded in 1865, employs 142,000 in 66 countries.
United Grain Corp.
United Grain is part of Mitsui & Co. Inc., another giant Japanese trading company. The company bills its terminal in Vancouver as the largest elevator on the West Coast. Built in 1935, the terminal was expanded this year to hold as much as 202,000 tons of corn and soybeans in silos up to 20 stories high.
The $72 million expansion enables United Grain to export as much as 5 million tons a year from the Port of Vancouver. A recent deepening of the Columbia River shipping channel allows bigger ships to call on the port, transporting grains consumed by Asia’s expanding middle class.
