Good morning. I'm representing Algoma Central Corporation. We've been in business for over 100 years, incorporated in Canada. We are the largest carrier on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway, with almost 30 ships plying these waters exclusively, ships that were purpose-built for the lakes and the seaway and optimized for the infrastructure that exists.
We have spent almost a half a billion dollars in the last few years renewing our fleet, or a portion of our fleet. We obviously have replaced older ships with more modern and more efficient ships, with the size, fuel efficiency and emissions all upgraded.
Our headquarters are in St. Catharines, just a few minutes from here. We have over 1,000 employees, at least half of them employed in the Niagara region and the rest throughout Canada.
In addition to our domestic activities, Algoma recently has expanded internationally with our expertise in what we call “short sea shipping”, which has been done around the Great Lakes for many years before the term was even popular. We're doing short sea shipping now and taking that expertise around the world. We have over 50 ships that we either own or operate in Central America, and throughout Europe and Asia. Algoma is growing and taking the expertise of the Canadian workforce and expanding it really throughout the world.
In terms of what we do in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway, we move a lot of iron ore, both Canadian ore mined in eastern Canada into the Hamilton area for production of steel in blast furnaces and ore mined in Minnesota moved cross-border into Hamilton to make steel for the Canadian industries. Some of that steel, of course, ends up going back into the U.S. or into automotive production for export into the U.S.
I mention that because, as I go through some of the commodities we move, you will see a theme. Over half of the cargoes that Algoma touches move cross-border. They either originate in Canada and end up in the U.S. or originate in the U.S. and end up in Canada.
The second biggest commodity we move is grain. We have over 50 cargoes of grain to move here in the next Oct., Nov., Dec., as they say. Most of that will be out of Thunder Bay, elevated in the St. Lawrence Seaway for export, but much of it also goes to millers in Canada for flour and food production domestically.
We carry a lot of road salt. We are the largest carrier of road salt. We move salt mined in Cleveland to the Toronto area. We move salt mined in Goderich and Windsor, Ontario, to places such as Milwaukee, Chicago, and Green Bay, as well as, of course, all throughout Canada as far up as Montreal.
We move a lot of aggregate stone for construction, as well as for use in blast furnaces to take impurities out of the steel as the iron ore is broken down. We move slag for the production of cement. We move cement from Canada into the U.S. for construction. We move clinker from Canada into the U.S., where it's further processed into cement in Detroit.
I will keep going for a few minutes. You are probably catching the theme of my remarks here.
We move aggregate stone that's mined in Ontario into places such as Green Bay for feed for chickens and things such as that. We move a lot of stone mined in the U.S. also into Canada, where it's used for its chemical properties and also in the steelmaking process.
I don't have prepared remarks. If you could wave to me when I'm done, I will be respectful.
I hope I can take some questions later about some of the bottlenecks that we have a vision for helping with. I heard that mentioned earlier. Also, Canadian seafarers are very important, obviously, our lifeblood. More important than our equipment is that we have the people to run that equipment. It would be silly to spend a half a billion dollars and not have trained and qualified Canadian seafarers to operate those ships for the next 30 to 35 years.
In terms of pilotage, we are the self-piloting folks who were mentioned by Mike earlier. We do self-pilotage certification for our employees. As companies, we are also 99.99% safe when we self-pilot our own fleets. We're working together, in co-operation with the pilotage authorities on that end.
Thank you.