The Maine Better Transportation Association met in Presque Isle for a presentation by officials from the Central Maine & Quebec Railway.
Ryan Ratledge, COO of the company, outlined the company’s recent investments and long-term plans of moving a variety of products via the railroads.
CMQR, owned by Fortress Transportation and Infrastructure Investors, has made about $30 million in track and infrastructure investments over the law two years, including purchasing two locomotives, Ratledge said.
The company employs 135 people with offices in Bangor and Quebec and has more than doubled in its train car load since 2014. CMQR also received a $6 million federal grant for work on the rail line between Searsport and Millinocket.
CMQR, which run freight trains and operates tracks, operates the rail line extending Millinocket, and the rest from there to Van Buren is owned by the state of Maine and operated by JD Irving Ltd.
“There are still several viable manufacturers and large ones that have a rail presence and do a fair amount of both inbound and outbound by rail,” Chris Caldwell, assistant vice president of marketing and sales, said of rail in Aroostook County.
Among the larger businesses are Twin Rivers Paper Company in Madawaska and Louisiana Pacific in New Limerick. CMQR also recently started doing some transportation for JM Huber in Easton and is also transporting heating oil for Dead River by rail to points in Houlton and Caribou.
“There’s other opportunities we see in Aroostook County involving fertilizer for both McCain Foods and Cavendish,” the latter a part of the JD Irving group of companies. “We hope to do some aggregate moves from the Bangor area,” Caldwell said.
Caldwell added that the company could also be a part of transporting the components and materials for the Number Nine Wind Farm, the later 250-megawatt wind project in the unorganized territory west of Bridgewater.
