Teck Resources does not expect port incident to affect fourth quarter coal sales

Westshore Terminals Berth 1 will be out of commission for an unknown amount of time.

Teck Resources Limited has announced that it is taking steps in response to impacts to coal shipping capacity at Westshore Terminals Limited following an incident on Friday, December 7th, that resulted in Berth 1 being out of commission for an unknown amount of time.

Teck will continue to ship through Berth 2 at Westshore and will be shifting shipping capacity to Neptune Terminals and exploring options for moving additional tonnage to Pacific Coast Terminals and Ridley Terminals.

Teck also told BIV (Business in Vancouver) that the ship collision that damaged a Westshore Terminals berth at Roberts Bank in Delta won't hurt the coal producer's sales this quarter.

Westshore Terminals Investment Corp. announced that, in the early hours of that morning, "a large cape size vessel" heading to dock at the facility's Berth 2 collided with a trestle leading out of Berth 1, "removing a large part of it." The terminal said its priority was to restore power to Berth 1, and stated that it wasn't possible to determine how long Berth 1 might be out of commission.

Responding to the incident, Teck said it would continue to ship out of Berth 2 at Westshore, but would be shifting some of its coal to Neptune Terminals. It added that it would look at moving additional tonnage through Pacific Coast Terminals and the Port of Prince Rupert's Ridley Terminals.

"Our preliminary assessment," Teck said in a statement, "is that we will meet or exceed our sales guidance of 6.2 million tonnes for the fourth quarter and, as there is inventory space available at Westshore, we do not expect this incident to have a material impact on coal production for the fourth quarter."