Wallula, Washington, October 10, 2023 – Tri-Cities Intermodal (TCI) has signed a lease/purchase agreement to acquire the former Cold Connect warehouse and property, with plans to develop an adjacent intermodal ramp in Wallula, WA. The plan represents a revival of the plans previously announced by Tiger Cool Express before they shut down operations in June. Tri-Cities Intermodal is an entirely new company – and the transaction had no connection to Tiger Cool.
Tri-Cities signed the lease/purchase agreement on Sept. 27, 2023, with Union Pacific Railroad Corporation (NYSE: UNP).
The envisioned Tri-Cities Intermodal Center will benefit the entire agricultural community in the three-state region by providing cost-effective and sustainable transportation capacity. Initially, service is intended to be offered between: Wallula and the Northwest Seaport Alliance on-dock facilities for dry imports and exports (in ISO equipment.) It will also support Union Pacific’s intermodal customers moving between Wallula and Chicago and beyond.
MONTREAL, Feb 28 (Reuters) – Canadian National Railway Co has started calling back many of the 450 workers it laid off earlier this month in eastern Canada, when blockades crippled operations on strategic rail lines, according to a company email sent to customers on Friday.
Earlier this week, police made 10 arrests and cleared a blockade in eastern Canada that had been stopping freight and passenger traffic for almost three weeks on one of Canada’s busiest lines.
The blockades were held in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en people in the Pacific province of British Columbia, who are seeking to stop TC Energy Corp from building a gas pipeline over their land.
“In the absence of illegal blockades on our network over the last 24 hours, and while we are keeping a close watch for any further disruptions, we have started calling back many of the temporarily laid off employees based in Eastern Canada,” CN chief executive Jean-Jacques Ruest said in the email seen by Reuters.
The email did not specify how many of the 450 workers were being called back.
After 21 days of disruptions, “there is a significant backlog of trains parked on our tracks and in our yards that will be processed,” the email said.
“The complete network recovery process will take several weeks.”
Montreal-based CN said the company was on its way to recovering in Western Canada, and said products like export grain, imported containerized goods, coal, potash and other commodities are moving to market.
Canada relies on CN and rival Canadian Pacific Railway to move crops, oil, potash, coal and manufactured goods to ports and the United States. About half of Canada’s exports move by rail, according to industry data.
(Reporting By Allison Lampert; editing by Grant McCool)
FILE PHOTO: A traffic light is seen in front of a logo of General Electric at the company’s plant in Birr
(Reuters) – The U.S. government is considering whether to stop General Electric Co from continuing to supply engines for a new Chinese passenger jet, according to people familiar with the matter, casting uncertainty over China’s efforts to enter the civil aviation market.
The potential restriction on the engine sales – possibly along with limits on other components for Chinese commercial aircraft such as flight control systems made by Honeywell International Inc – is the latest move in the battle between the world’s two largest economies over trade and technology.
The issue is expected to come up at an interagency meeting about how strictly to limit exports of U.S. technology to China on Thursday and at another meeting with members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet set for Feb. 28, sources said.
The White House and the U.S. Commerce Department, which issues licenses for such exports, declined to comment, as did a GE spokeswoman. The departments of Defense, State, Energy and Treasury did not respond to requests for comment.
For years, the United States has supported American companies’ business with China’s budding civil aviation industry.
The government has provided licenses that allow those companies to sell engines, flight control systems and other components for China’s first large commercial aircraft, the COMAC C919. The narrow-body jet has already engaged in test flights and is expected to go into service next year. COMAC is an acronym for Commercial Aircraft Corp of China Ltd.
But the Trump administration is weighing whether to deny GE’s latest license request to provide the CFM LEAP-1C engine for the C919, people familiar with the matter said, though GE has received licenses for the LEAP engines since 2014 and was last granted one in March 2019.
The CFM LEAP engine is a joint venture between GE and France’s Safran Aircraft Engines. The proposal to halt the deliveries of the engines was also reported on Saturday by the Wall Street Journal.
Safran did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and French government officials could not be reached for comment.
Aside from aircraft engines, flight control systems are up for discussion at the February meetings. Honeywell International has received licenses to export flight control systems to COMAC for the C919 for about a decade, and one was approved in early 2020, according to a person familiar with the matter.
But future permission for such sales for COMAC’s passenger aircrafts may be up for debate. Honeywell also has been seeking a license for flight control technology to participate in the development of the C929, China’s planned wide-body jet venture with Russia, the person said.
The flight control system operates moving mechanical parts, such as the wing flaps, from the cockpit.
A spokeswoman for Honeywell declined to comment.
An aerospace trade group official said his organization would like to weigh in on any policy shifts.
“If there are any changes, we would hope they would engage with us, as they’ve done before,” said Remy Nathan, vice president for international affairs at the Aerospace Industries Association.
At the heart of the debate over a possible crackdown on the sale of U.S. parts to China’s nascent aircraft industry is whether such shipments would fuel the rise of a serious competitor to U.S.-based Boeing Co or boost China’s military capabilities.
People familiar with the matter said some administration officials are concerned the Chinese could reverse engineer some items, though others say an abundance of LEAP engines in China has not brought that about to date.
If the United States were to move ahead with the measure, one person familiar with the matter said, China could retaliate by ordering more planes from Airbus SE , rather than crisis-hit Boeing, which relies on China for a fourth its deliveries.
The Trump administration’s meetings about technology issues also are set to include a discussion of whether to impose further restrictions on suppliers to Huawei Technologies, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker, which is on a U.S. trade blacklist.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld and Alexandra Alper; additional reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
FILE PHOTO: China’s home-grown C919 passenger jet taxis after landing on its maiden flight at the Pudong International Airport in Shanghai
PARIS, Oct 16 (Reuters) – France and Germany have signed a binding deal on arm exports control rules for jointly developed programmes, such as the tank and the warplane of the future, the two countries said on Wednesday in a statement issued after a joint cabinet meeting held in Toulouse.
German curbs on arms exports to non-European Union or non-NATO countries have been a thorn in bilateral co-operation for years. Germany’s SPD party, part of the ruling coalition, is particularly concerned about the trade.
According to the deal signed on Wednesday, Germany will not block French exports to third countries provided equipment was made with less than 20% German components.
French firms, such as Nexter and Arquus, previously known as Renault Trucks Defense, say German restrictions have hindered export deals. Nexter was also worried about the feasibility of the tank of the future project (MGCS) that should be developed with German firm Krauss-Maffei Wegmann.
Airbus Defence & Space and Dassault equally complained that the SCAF fighter jet project with Germany and Spain could be left in limbo.
France and Germany tentatively agreed to speed up the development of the warplane in the next few months, French President Emmanuel Macron said during a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The two countries will sign in January 2020 a deal to develop the SCAF demonstrator programme, French minister of Armed Forces Florence Parly said on Twitter.
Besides defence deals, Paris and Berlin also said they agreed to give preferential treatment to European companies for the launch of space rockets.
(Writing by Benoit Van Overstraeten and Tangi Salaün; Editing by John Irish)
PARIS, Oct 7 (Reuters) – France’s Dassault Aviation and Europe’s Airbus have stepped up pressure on France and Germany to agree on the next stage of a planned fighter project, warning Europe’s arms industry and long-term security could suffer from delays.
The two companies are the leading industrial partners in a project to build a futuristic swarm of manned and unmanned warplanes, announced by the leaders of France and Germany two years ago and expanded earlier this year to include Spain.
Dassault and Airbus won a 65-million-euro contract in January to develop the concept for the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) but await a new contract to build demonstrators for interlinked fighters, drones and an “air combat cloud” by 2026.
Dassault Aviation Chief Executive Eric Trappier told a conference of policymakers last month that the demonstrator contract should have been launched in September but this was now slipping towards end-year. He called it “indispensable” to avoid any further delays in order to maintain the 2026 deadline.
No reason has been given for the delays.
On Monday evening, Dassault and Airbus amplified those warnings with a joint statement.
“If Europe does not move forward — and move forward quickly — on this programme, it will be impossible to maintain the development and production capabilities needed for a sovereign defence industry,” the companies said.
The warplane system is expected to be operational from 2040, with a view to replacing Dassault’s Rafale and the four-nation Eurofighter, in which Airbus represents both Germany and Spain.
The new project faces competition from Britain and its plans for a new combat jet dubbed “Tempest”.
The fighter developments have split the current Eurofighter consortium and led to a shake-up of industrial alliances as Italy joins Eurofighter partner Britain on Tempest, turning its back on Germany and Spain, while Sweden has opened the door to abandoning its independent stance by co-operating on Tempest.
The FCAS is also overshadowed by differences between France and Germany over export policy after Germany imposed a ban on arms exports to Saudi Arabia over the death of killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi a year ago by Saudi operatives.
The ban, recently extended to March, has raised questions over a long-delayed Saudi border systems contract run by Airbus.
Airbus Defence and Space Chief Executive Dirk Hoke called in a magazine interview last week for the export ban to be relaxed. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has said there is no reason for the moratorium to be lifted.
France and Germany are expected to discuss the issue at ministerial meetings this week.
AIRBUS SETBACK IN SPAIN
Airbus meanwhile faces a battle to shore up its position as a top defence contractor in Spain after losing its place as the representative of Spain’s interests on the upcoming fighter project to local defence electronics firm Indra Sistemas.
Spain last month named Indra as contractor for the Spanish share of the Franco-German-led FCAS project, displacing Airbus from the Spanish coordinator role it had held on Eurofighter.
Airbus officials have pledged to try to overturn the move but a Spanish defence source told Reuters there was no change in the decision.
Indra declined to comment.
Publicly, Airbus has said it was surprised by the decision but has pledged to continue to defend Spain’s best interests.
Dassault will meanwhile mark a long-awaited milestone on Tuesday when it delivers the first of 36 Rafales to India, the culmination of a fighter procurement process that lasted almost 20 years and involved the cancellation of a much larger deal.
La Tribune reported on Monday that France and India were discussing a possible repeat order for 36 more Rafales.
(Additional reporting by Emma Pinedo Gonzalez in Madrid, Tassilo Hummel in Berlin, Editing by Deepa Babington)
