Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
Grain ports around the world under intense pressure from rising demurrage costs to tighter space and aging infrastructure. In today’s episode, we explore how smarter equipment and engineering can turn these challenges into opportunities. Let’s get started.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
Hello and welcome to the show. Welcome to the Whole Grain Podcast. which feeds and fuels the world. This episode is proudly sponsored by AGI, Ag Growth International, a global leader in delivering equipment and engineering solutions that help grain facilities operate safely, efficiently, and at scale. Today, we’re turning our focus to a topic that affects operations in the global stage, the growing pressures facing grain port facilities. As the world becomes more interconnected, port terminals are facing tighter turnaround times, stricter environmental and increasing financial penalties when delays occur. And with limited space and aging infrastructure, the challenges become even greater. To help us navigate these complex issues, I’m joined by Justin Patterson, Vice President of Global Engineering at AGI. Justin brings more than 20 years of experience in the grain industry, including engineering and construction leadership for both country and port operations in North America and South America. With degrees in civil engineering, Thank you. In today’s conversation, you’ll hear insights on the steep cost of port delays and how high capacity equipment can reduce them, infrastructure and maintenance challenges in aging facilities, the role of AGI’s engineering and technical sales teams in designing smart, site-specific solutions, and how ports can adapt to evolving vessel sizes, environmental regulations, and multi-commodity handling. All that and more coming up next.
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Music Bye.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
Thank you for joining us, folks. We have another great episode coming here with Justin Patterson of AGI. Justin, welcome to the show, first of all. Thank you for joining us on the Whole Grain Podcast. Well, thanks for having me. Nice speaking to you now from just outside your location in Sao Paulo, Brazil. You have an incredible background. You are the VP of Global Engineering at AGI, and you’ve been doing that since 2018. Today, we have a really big topic, something we haven’t talked about here in the show, so I know our podcast listeners will be tuned to that. Our theme is about modernization. modern challenges that grain port facilities face and how ag equipment manufacturers such as AGI can assist. Tell us a little bit about your role so far with AGI since joining them in 2018.
Justin Paterson, AGI:
Yeah, well I started like I said in 2018. Previous to that I worked for a large grain handling company in Canada managing their construction facility operations and AGI brought me on to do kind of the same thing for them. Receive construction projects, look after the engineering department, expand the engineering department in AGI. And that’s kind of moved around a little bit over the last number of years as careers do. And since October of last year, I’ve been based in AGI’s office in Brazil because this is where kind of we have a The biggest projects that are going on inside of AGI are in the Brazil market right now. For listeners that aren’t familiar with the Brazil market, it’s really going through a big transformation. A lot of redevelopment work going on in the port, a lot of development work going on in the country infrastructure, because a lot of the country infrastructure we take for granted in North America doesn’t even exist here. I oversee the engineering work that we do down here and then the projects that we’re executing specific to Brazil and Latin America.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
Well, that’s exciting. I know that need is great. Over there and the number of projects going on at port facilities is just enormous. I was in Brazil a couple of Octobers ago and learned a lot about that. Let’s set the stage here, if you don’t mind, for our listeners. Why grain port efficiency is critically important in today’s global trade? We know it is, but why is that so? Can you just state that?
Justin Paterson, AGI:
Yeah, I mean, every aspect of the supply chain involved in port operations, be it the rail side infrastructure, the product coming in, or in the case of Brazil, a lot of it’s on trucks. And then also the marine traffic headed out. Everybody’s got pressure to turn their assets. They want the rail cars back in the country. They want the boats back on the ocean. Nobody has any time to waste in any of these operations. So equipment has to be functional. Equipment has to be easy to maintain, have strong uptime. And the other issue that they have in a lot of port areas is it’s aging infrastructure, right? So we need to work within what we have and the space that we have available. So when making equipment upgrade choices, you have to select something that’s going to tick all these boxes for you.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
That’s a great overview of why it’s so critical. So the challenge is to become efficient. Let’s talk about the pressure on port operations in a little more detail. Some of the things I wanted to talk about, and actually the first thing is about time pressures from shipping scheduled and to merge costs. Can you add some detail there?
Justin Paterson, AGI:
Yeah, certainly when you’ve got a boat waiting for you in the port, they charge demerge costs in Brazil, $30,000 to $40,000 a day. In North America, certainly at the height of the pandemic and supply chain snarls, it was approaching $100,000 or more per day to have a ship waiting for you. And if you have a bucket elevator down, that’s real money. You have to hit your loading windows or potentially all of your profitability on that move has gone out the window.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
Wow. So financial penalties for delays, their impact on operators, it cannot be ignored. And so that is top of mind. And so we’re ultimately getting into solutions that can support people in port facilities to move that grain as efficient as possible. So global examples, Brazil, you talked about, add some more detail to that. And of course, the huge Vancouver port facility and any other examples. Can you cite some situations there and describe that more?
Justin Paterson, AGI:
Yeah, in Brazil, obviously close to mind right now. That’s where I’m based out of actually today. We’re doing commissioning on our first of two 2,500 ton per hour bucket elevators in a facility in Santos here. They’re the largest elevators, I believe, in the agriculture industry that have actually been built and sold. And so this is a big achievement for AGI, but also fantastic for our customer because we’re working within, as I said earlier, built up infrastructure. There’s no more space beside the water in Brazil. Certainly on the Northwest coast of North America, everything’s built out. You’ve got to work within what you have. So our customer came to us with a real challenge where they said, we’ve got this existing footprint. We want to double our shipping capacity. What can you help us with? And AGI was able to come up with this solution, working with some of our key supplier partners to put together
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
this piece of equipment for them. So I think you quoted the operators are being charged increasingly higher penalties for delays in Brazil to merge. I think you said it can cost $30,000 to $40,000 per day in North America. It could be even higher. Sometimes you said even $100,000. Now, that’s per day. That’s amazing. So similar pressures at rail facilities and operators they face to turn their assets. So that’s a huge incentive to load faster. So let’s talk about AGI solutions. Equipment must support high capacity. That’s one. step is high capacity, continuous operation. We also need to talk about high efficiency equipment and then also high capacity bucket elevators and conveyors and how they can assist in reducing downtime and faster throughput. Obviously, capacity is the name of the game. The faster you
Justin Paterson, AGI:
can get the material moving through the facility and out to the dock, the faster you load the boat and the faster it’s on its way. You can tell I’m a prairie boy. I’m talking about boats and I should be referring to ships, but… The next biggest thing is the ease of maintenance and just the robustness of the equipment, right? So the last thing you want is your high capacity bucket elevator to be offline for you. So we really focus on developing equipment that’s robust, that has high service factors on power transmission components, shaft sizes, something that’s not going to leave you stranded. But also the big focus, my background, actually working in the operations side and now working on the equipment to side, thinking about the guy who actually has to work on these things and has to change the oil in the gearboxes and grease the bearings and things like that, so that when you do take these maintenance windows, you can get through and deal with it quickly and get the equipment back online again. It’s a big focus for AGI engineering to make something that’s easy to look after.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
I like that. That’s why you’re the perfect guest and a great representative of your organization, AGI, because you see both sides of it. You just put yourself in the line of the operations. scheduling, maintenance is key. And there’s only so many windows. So there’s a lot of record keeping, a lot of work to be done. So talking high capacity bucket elevators assist with this. Let’s talk about what is the capacity? I’m curious, what is capable, for example, in Brazil, in terms of capacity in metric tons per hour? Basically, the state of the art Right
Justin Paterson, AGI:
here in Brazil, we’re installing right now a set of conveying equipment in Santos at 2,500 tons per hour. We will be doing one on a project early next year where we’ll be going to 3,000 tons per hour, metric tons per hour. That’s for loading sugar. So you can imagine how much sugar that is coming off of that belt conveyor.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
That is incredible. I can’t even imagine that. But you are able to do that, and those are projects that your company is working on. Yeah, absolutely.
Justin Paterson, AGI:
Our engineering team here in Brazil is fantastic and kind of at the forefront, I think, in port facility equipment design, this group, because there’s just so much investment happening in this segment in Brazil right now. Certainly the tariff situation has wiped out a lot of soybean exports coming out of the United States. All of that business has moved to Brazil. And just the size of the crops that they get here and the volume they have to move through the existing infrastructure. It’s going up, up, and up.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
We’re talking about infrastructure and maintenance challenges. There’s not just one. There’s not just two. There’s several key things that are challenging. For example, we’re talking about aging infrastructure, especially maybe in North America, where equipment might be 50 to 80 plus years old. There’s that challenge, aging infrastructure. You can describe that some more, but what are All those challenges that one may consider when you’re talking about port facilities and moving grain. Yeah. So
Justin Paterson, AGI:
my experience with working in port facilities and especially aging ones in North America, there’s a finite amount of space. We’ve said before, the waterfront’s all built out. There’s not a spare lot next door to go assemble something. And by the same token, nobody wants to take any additional extra downtime on anything. So the name of the game in looking after these port assets, in my experience, has been taking a really detailed look at where actually is the bottleneck in the process flow. So So taking the product right from where it’s coming out of the bin to where it’s going onto the ship, where can that be optimized? And then working within the space that’s available, how can you situate a really efficient, really robust piece of equipment that’s going to achieve the shipping objectives?
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
So that’s interesting when you say that. This is what I think of. There’s a lot of listeners right now who might be in the vendor and supplier side. There might be students in industry. There’s probably a lot of people who are on the grain operations side. And they may not all, in fact, many may not be working at port facilities. So when they talk about being efficient there and maybe improving or working in and amongst aging equipment or building a facility, It’s altogether different at a port facility. We’re talking about a real estate issue. There simply is not the room and the demand, because this is… A lot of these countries like Brazil and U.S. and Canada are feeding and fueling the world. And the amount and volume of grain that’s going through there is just phenomenal. One probably can hardly conceive. And so the time to turn this over and get this on the big ship and out, the demand and pressures are unreal. That’s what I’ve heard of people in this industry. And so these are unique challenges from other operation facilities, right? At port facilities. And so… It’s just you don’t have the space. So AGI looks at what they have and tries to partner and provide solutions, custom design solutions. And it can vary, but there’s so many more, it seems like. seems like there’s so many more challenges and restrictions due to the demand of time and availability to do something in there and just the real estate. So limited maintenance windows, you mentioned that. You didn’t mention other things that people are facing, staffing shortages, right? Isn’t that also true in terms of increased operational hours? Tell me what that’s like. I mean, port facilities, they’re
Justin Paterson, AGI:
The uptime is the name of the game. The more hours a day that you’re operating, moving product, the more money that you’re making, essentially, right? So what goes with that, though, is oftentimes there are staffing pressures, either from just a financial standpoint, we don’t want to have 30 people standing around when we could have 15, and other times it’s actual labour shortages where they’re not actually able to get people to fully staff the facilities. That goes back to more efficient equipment, equipment that doesn’t require so much maintenance, equipment that’s much more reliable. All of this feeds into staffing levels. And so it’s another advantage that having highly efficient equipment in a port facility
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
can give to you. You kind of marry the two big areas of engineering and also grain operations. You also bring in a unique perspective from a global scale. So now I want to ask you about disparities, differences in different countries, perhaps, in terms of global investments. What are the global investment disparities? Can you speak of that?
Justin Paterson, AGI:
Yeah. In Brazil, over the last few years, essentially been… demolishing and rebuilding a huge amount of their port infrastructure because a lot of it was too far behind the times to be salvageable. Versus a lot of my experience in North America is there’s been more, what I’m going to say, incremental upgrades over the years that have kept older assets closer to what the industry standard would be. And so that creates actually a bit of a bigger engineering challenge because you go back to, you don’t want to completely start with a new sheet of paper. So you need to figure out, you know, how can I fit this piece of equipment in this space? What are my structural capacity constraints? What are height constraints? What are our building permit constraints? All of those sorts of things come into a lot more of the equation in North America when you’re working within existing assets versus Brazil, where they’ve kind of just said, look, this stuff is too far gone. We should just knock it down and we’ll start over again. Not in all cases, but there’s more of that happening here. In Brazil also, they’re opening up more of the north corridor of the country. So there’s river terminal development happening in the northern part of the country slowly, but that’s actually brand new port development. So again, that’s sort of a disparity between what you see in North America versus what you see internationally.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
So one summary statement I’m gathering here is they’re trying to squeeze more operational days out of the same infrastructure. Is that true? Yes, absolutely. Now, AGI solutions are present and real, and they’re actively being engaged every single day. So I don’t know if you could add some of those details to provide some engineering support for the facilities. Can you talk about how there’s integration with these existing structures some more, for example, in Brazil?
Justin Paterson, AGI:
Yeah, I mean, I view everything that we do in the port as basically a bespoke solution, that these are big, expensive pieces of equipment for very bespoke pieces of infrastructure. No terminal is exactly the same as any other terminal. So when AGI is requested to get involved in projects in the port, we spend a lot of time on site with the customer. We’re doing measurements of existing equipment, existing structures, oftentimes going back through old paper drawings, or in situations where no drawings exist at all, we’re out with a tape measure trying to figure out what actually do we have to work with here. This tower that we’re going to erect an elevator inside of, What’s the capacity of the head service platform? Do we have access that’s going to meet the modern building code? All of those sorts of things. So everything that AGI gets requested to do in the port is a really one-off. And that’s something that we actually do really quite well at. We’ve got a really big, very capable engineering department, lots of years of experience doing these types of facilities.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
Can you talk about low maintenance equipment? There are choices. facilities can make when working with a vendor such as AGI. In terms of AGI, what are some of those options in terms of low-maintenance equipment?
Justin Paterson, AGI:
A big one in the ports is, this is maybe ancillary to maintenance on the equipment itself, but maintenance on the infrastructure. And something a lot of people don’t, doesn’t necessarily come to mind, but housekeeping. When you’re moving 2,500, 3,000 tons per hour of anything on a conveyor, you’re going to make dust. And so where does that accumulated dust go? So AGI has some really innovative solutions in high capacity, fully enclosed belt conveyors, for instance. Probably listeners are familiar with our high roller product line and the Big Brother the High Life product line. Those cut down on maintenance and housekeeping costs significantly because all of the dust that’s generated through the conveying process is completely enclosed inside the conveyor body. And they’re self-cleaning and self-reloading. And that really has become actually the industry standard down here in Brazil. And it’s very common to see this product line also in North America. And the number of people are now emulating our product line, to put it charitably. But this is something that kind of sets the standard for for controlling housekeeping costs. And one of the things that I’ve found, I’ve done a lot of work in the port of Vancouver, being a good neighbor is really important. And so there’s a lot of built up residential infrastructure, especially in Vancouver, Canada, around some of these port facilities. And there’s some severe limitations on dust emissions that are permitted. And even if you’re within the permitted amount, people don’t like having beeswings and wheat dust and crap on their cars when they get out of their house in the morning. So anything you can do to be a better neighbor is going to be to your benefit as a facility operator.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
Very good point. Thanks for sharing that. That’s a really good, important perspective. The other thing I wanted to touch on is you mentioned high roller. A lot of people in the industry are listening to know about that. Can you add some detail to that just to keep people informed and more information about it product line?
Justin Paterson, AGI:
Yeah, the product line has been around since I’ve been involved in the industry and well before I came to AGI. It’s a totally enclosed belt conveyor. So it has a bottom on it, all the material related to the conveying processes contained inside of it. And it lends itself really effectively to doing dust mitigation strategies. So with a more conventional open belt conveyor that you still see a lot of in the port, there’s not really a good way to take aspiration off of it to pull air off of the top of the conveyor to actually control and segment some of this dust somewhere else. So that’s a total reasonable possibility with a high roller or high life enclosed belt is pulling dust off the equipment. That can be beneficial because other parts of the conveying process in the port facility don’t lend themselves to removing dust. So you hear people talk about dustless spouts. in the process where the product’s actually coming off the end of the conveyor and into the ship, that creates a lot of dust also. So if you can mitigate some of the dust before the product actually gets to the transfer point, you’re going to have less fugitive dust emissions coming out of the
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
ship’s hold to deal with later. Very nice. So we’re talking here in the sake about infrastructure and maintenance challenges. So you brought some really good perspective and points here. But I think another thing is when grain facilities are reaching out and looking for solutions, they want experts, expert technical sales team. So Here’s an opportunity to talk about your organization’s technical sales team. We have a fantastic
Justin Paterson, AGI:
technical sales team here at AGI. In North America, we have a lot of people who have significant industry experience coming from all of the major industry players. And the same is in Brazil and frankly, around the other regions in the world we operate, which is everywhere. We are international. So the technical sales group, our team, we focus on recruiting and bringing on people that have this actual real operational experience and can talk to our customers from a practical standpoint and bridge the gap with the engineering folks. And then in engineering, we also have a number of people like myself who have some real practical hands-on operational experience that can also talk technically about how do we design the equipment? What do we need for the solution here? What’s going to bring us into compliance with the regulations, but not blow up the cost either. Like what is a a practical, pragmatic solution. And AGI Technical Sales can absolutely offer that to our customers.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
So technical sales team members, they bridge that gap between sales and execution, ensure that the equipment is quoted accurately, specifications are correct, like you touched on, and solutions, like you also touched on, are tailored or customized to the application. So talk a little bit more about what their support also includes
Justin Paterson, AGI:
product from AGI. When we get involved in a major capital project like this, we are on site from first conception working with not only the capital projects team, but actually the operations team who really know the facility. We want to understand from the boots on the ground standpoint, what are the challenges with your particular facility? Not what does headquarters think you need, but that’s part of it. And headquarters is going to produce a specification, but we also want to understand from the standpoint of the people using the equipment and actually in inhabiting the facility, which direction does the wind predominantly blow from? What challenges do you have working with the ship on the dock side? Things like that, that we integrate into what we put together for our project proposal. And then we’re with the customer through well-passed commissioning. So some of our projects in Brazil, as part of our service, we attach someone from engineering to the facility for the full commissioning. year after the facility starts up to make sure that everything is functioning correctly, the equipment break-in is going well, and performance is as expected.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
Now, let’s segment over to space traffic and lease pressures. This, again, can be really specific to port facilities, not always, but certainly have their own challenges and then solutions to follow. So, let’s first talk about container traffic preference over bulk grain.
Justin Paterson, AGI:
This you see a lot on the west coast of North America. Container traffic, it comes and goes a little bit in terms of the preference of port authorities, but typically has been pressure to move bulk operations out of, let’s say, downtown Vancouver. And there is a preference to container traffic because it’s cleaner, it’s quieter, it’s perceived as more efficient. And so this just adds to some of the pressure on bulk facility operators to be more efficient with ever-decreasing footprint they have available for them to operate
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
in. And don’t forget about lease renewals, space constraints. There’s a lot going on.
Justin Paterson, AGI:
There’s a lot going on there, especially in, again, going back to my Vancouver experience, most of the facilities, they’re not on owned land. So the land is leased from the federal government for a certain number. That’s how long you have to operate and to achieve the return on your investment in that space and then you basically you return the land and whatever you built on it back to the government. Oh wow.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
Urban encroachment and increasing scrutiny over dust, noise… emissions you said be a good neighbor that means a lot you’ve touched on that anything else you want to add about the increasing scrutiny over dust noise and emissions yeah uh
Justin Paterson, AGI:
you know environmental topics uh are the name of the game now and not just related to fugitive dust emissions most facilities and built up areas have noise specifications none of the neighbors of these facilities want to listen to a gearbox howling to them in the middle of the night so all of this is factors into sort of increasingly technical solutions that are required from equipment providers. Noise is a byproduct of the amount of power that you’re putting into a piece of equipment. So when we go to build a 2,500 ton per hour bucket elevator, everything has to be scrutinized for noise emissions because we have to stay within potentially a certain specification. So these are all things that have to be thought about when you’re looking at putting a whole lot more horsepower
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
in the same footprint. There’s so much to think about. Now, in terms of AGI solutions, large capacity equipment for space. So we have constrained ports. That’s a challenge. How does AGI support that? Dust control systems are important. Can you highlight those things and any other examples you have of influencing local regulations related to the port or the region or the country? Well, unfortunately we don’t have any
Justin Paterson, AGI:
influence over local regulations. We kind of just have to follow them. But yes, it goes back to, again, the dust being the biggest one that we have control over. And AGI does offer like a full suite of dust control solutions that are appropriate for port infrastructure. Whether it’s spot filtration or central baghouse filtration, AGI does have a complete product line to handle that. And as well, engineering group to support actually configuring a solution to a particular application. And beyond that, the noise is certainly part of it. And a little bit, to a certain extent, the aesthetics. I’ve actually been on projects in Vancouver where the color that the motor was painted was part of the building permit because they didn’t want it to look out of place in the skyline. That’s potentially a unique Canadian issue, but we deal with all of it.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
Yeah. Wow. Lots to consider. AGI helped change regulations in Brazil by introducing enclosed belt conveyors. the industry standard. AGI brought
Justin Paterson, AGI:
this product to Brazil. And so just the background on it, I guess. Previously, everything in the Brazil port was on open belts. You have a lot of fugitive dust emissions. The other problem they have in port operations is it rains a lot next to the ocean. And so you have, this shouldn’t be new to you, but the enclosed belt is weathertight. So you have increased loading a ship in the rain is still a problem because you’re conveying product off the end of the conveyor. But doing transfers within the facility, you don’t have as much issue with rainwater contamination of the product that’s being transferred within the plant when you’re using an enclosed belt. But Brazil, the biggest was the fugitive dust emissions. And now that’s the regulation. Open belts are not permitted here anymore. Oh, interesting. Yeah.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
Bring up some really, yeah, very interesting points. Let’s talk about flexibility and future-proofing. Some of the topics for consideration include equipment that supports multiple commodities, obviously running multiple commodities, so it makes sense, and cross-contamination prevention. For example, self-cleaning spouts, adapting to large vessels. And this is post Panama ships, for example, climate related challenges. There’s a lot to consider. Can you describe those a little more detail? And then what are AGI solutions for each of those?
Justin Paterson, AGI:
Yeah, what this question and this topic drives out a little bit is like, we don’t know what things are going to be like in 10 or 15 years from now. Port facilities, major, major capital investments. And so when… The choices made to make a major upgrade to a facility, they want as much flexibility as possible built into it. If you talk to me 10, 12 years ago when I was strictly working in North America and said, hey, you know, Justin, in 10 or 12 years, you’re going to be installing a 2,500 ton per hour conveyor specifically for sugar. I would have said, wow, that’s ridiculous, but that is what we’re working on right now. And so also the shifting trade patterns. So depending on the agricultural economic situation in the world, export trends come and go. So places where you see previously, you said a lot of soybean exports from the US is drying up quite a bit right now. And Canada used to be a lot of canola meal exports. That’s kind of dried up a little bit right now. Those assets, they’re still trying to work them. So it’s a shift in other commodities. So something that may have been designed or conceived for one trade pattern to support one trade pattern, you need to have some flexibility to be able to support what you don’t foresee coming and so you know agi in brazil for instance our high roller is really well suited for conveying sugar which is something that you know we designed into it when we made the brazil product not knowing to what extent it was really going to take off for the sugar market here in brazil also supports soybeans does wheat does corn so having that sort of flexibility in your equipment is is critical to running a successful port operation because you don’t know what’s going to come at you can be as simple as somebody making a tweet that changes global economic agricultural trade patterns
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
So these are incredible, as you said, capital investments. There’s some risk involved. Want to reduce the risk, make good decisions. Some of those decisions support multiple commodities, being flexible, as you said. Before we go here, I want to touch on global trade shifts and strategic positioning. Oh, goodness. There’s so much to talk about here. I don’t even know where to start. But there are, in fact, shifting trade routes, right? Absolutely. We’ll just start there.
Justin Paterson, AGI:
Yeah, as we’ve seen, without getting into the politics behind it, with sort of the global trade disruption that’s happened since the beginning of the year, and then retaliatory measures taken by other countries, it’s really screwed up, to a certain extent, established agricultural trade networks. The example I keep pointing to is soybean exports from the US, or previous to that, canola exports from Canada have been severely impacted by things that aren’t strictly agricultural related. It’s not like there was a crop failure. It’s that there’s been some change in the geopolitical environment that’s caused crop movements to become uneconomical. And so that plays into, like I said previously, having flexibility in your equipment to be able to work with different products depending on what’s available and what’s most economical to ship.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
Yes, geopolitical climate is dynamic and it’s ever-changing. And so obviously we’ve got a lot to think about here and shifting trade routes. Let’s talk about importance of operational flexibility and speed.
Justin Paterson, AGI:
Absolutely. When you have either railway assets that come in, that you have to unload your train cars and get the equipment back out in the country, or in the situation where there’s a ship at birth and that needs to be loaded and turned, the faster the equipment can run, the faster the commodity can be conveyed, the faster that you’re going to put those things back to work, making money and not sitting there waiting for you. So the everywhere in the port that the focus is on how quickly can you move product from point A to point B. That’s just what it’s about now.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
So AGI solutions are there to support you, other players or industry are there, but it’s always evaluating constantly in terms of these global trade shifts and how that’s impacting strategic positioning. So Global Player, how can we use a system or product that has been successful in one region and localize it for another?
Justin Paterson, AGI:
We’re doing a lot of that. Brazil is a success story, for instance. So we’ve taken a lot of AGI’s established North American product. And again, going back to the geopolitical situation, Brazil’s tough to import stuff into. So we needed to figure out how to build it in Brazil with Brazilian specification of steel, Brazil is a partially metric country. So bearing sizes, shaft sizes, fasteners are all different than what we have in North America. So AGI does a lot of regionalization of its products to serve better the Brazil market. We took an established product from North America and configured it so that we can effectively manufacture it in Brazil with spare parts that are available in Brazil. And also, relative to what are some of the peculiarities of the Brazil market, we don’t export a lot of sugar from the United States, for instance, or Canada. Brazil exports a huge amount of sugar. So it requires a slightly different configuration of bucket elevator conveyor to do that. And we take an established product design conception and customize it for the real specific needs of the region and the customer.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
Great thought process there. Thank you very much. Appreciate all the support you’re delivering to our whole grain podcast listeners. Justin, we’re talking about poor pressures today. They are real. They’re very different from other grain facilities. We’re talking about navigating grain facility challenges with smart equipment solutions. AGI is a solution provider, certainly in this area and others. What are some of your closing sentiments or statements or recap some of those highlights?
Justin Paterson, AGI:
Yeah, I mean, AGI, as you said, is a creative solution provider. We like to understand what it is that our customers require and really what are their operational pressures and challenges and drive down on what problem we’re really trying to solve for them and then come up with a solution that’s going to be effective, be robust, meet or exceed their expectations, and then support the heck out of it. That’s what AGI’s business is. And that’s what my position is too. As part of the AGI team, to support our major commercial customers in this way.
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
Justin, thank you. Thank you, AGI, for supporting and advancing the grain handling and grain processing industry. Your insights are very informative and very timely and very relevant. We will include any and all key links and things you want to include in our show notes for action items for Whole Grain Podcast listeners. Make sure you go to thejeeps.com forward slash Whole Grain Podcast, the website there. There’ll be actually a link for a page dedicated just to, you got to see Justin. You got to get his headshot there and especially Special graphic there will have a link, of course, for this player. Some of you are listening from there. The show notes will be there. The transcript of the show is there. And of course, this show is found on just about every podcast directory out there. Share this with your colleagues and your network. This is an important one. It’s such a dynamic environment and EGI’s organizations are here to support. you and solutions and it’s good to have conversations. So we will leave important links in the show notes so that people can get that again from any of your podcast apps. You’ll see the show notes in the description. You’ll also see that on our website. For people to find out more information about your organization, Justin, what is the best way to connect and learn more? I would head over
Justin Paterson, AGI:
to aggrowth.com and see our product catalog and some of our highlight projects and various other links from there. We’re also on other social media platforms, LinkedIn,
Jim Lenz, GEAPS:
Facebook, places like that. Wonderful. Thank you, Justin, very much. Thank you, AGI, for sponsoring today’s episode. It was a wonderful treat to have you on the Whole Grain Podcast. Appreciate it. Thanks. That wraps up today’s episode of the Jeep’s Whole Grain Podcast. A big thank you to Justin Patterson for sharing his global expertise on how grain port facilities can overcome the mounting pressures of modern trade. This episode was made possible through a generous support of AGI, Aged Growth International. Whether you’re managing throughput challenges, navigating aging infrastructure, or seeking equipment that can adapt to evolving regulations, AGI’s team is ready to help with customized engineering and high efficiency solutions. If you found this episode insightful, I encourage you to continue the conversation. Here are a few reflection questions to discuss with your team. What are the greatest sources of pressure or inefficiency in your port or terminal today? Where might a Equipment upgrades make the biggest impact on performance or uptime. And how are you preparing your facility for future capacity, regulatory, or environmental demands? How are you preparing your facility for future capacity, regulatory, or environmental demands? To learn more about AGI’s products and services, visit aggrowth.com. That’s A-G-R-O-W-T-H dot com. And for additional resources, education, and networking opportunities, head over to GEAPS, that’s g-e-a-p-s dot com thanks for listening to the whole grain podcast be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode until next time stay safe stay engaged and keep moving grain forward
