The port is iced in for much of the year and is accessible only between late July and early November. Shallow waters also restrict its development as an ocean port. Despite these restrictions the port remains useful for shipping grain and other bulk cargo because shipping by rail costs several times as much, per ton, as shipping by sea. The port is a compulsory pilotage area. Pilotage is provided by the
Great Lakes Pilotage Authority, a
Crown corporation of the
Government of Canada which includes responsibility for pilotage on the
Hudson Bay coast of the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba. Pilotage charges between July 20 and October 31 follow a published schedule; outside these dates charges are based on cost recovery. From 1931 to 2016, the port typically was used for outgoing shipments of grain, usually from the
Canadian Wheat Board. Since 2007, port activity diversified somewhat and increased in line with growth in Arctic mining operations in
Nunavut and an expansion in supply ship reloading. In September 2007 the port handled its first domestic export trade, shipping 12,500 tonnes of wheat to
Halifax aboard the Arctic supply ship
Kathryn Spirit. The port was almost entirely reliant on grain from the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) for its viability. Wheat accounted for 90 per cent of all traffic through the port. According to a November 6, 2008 press release, the CWB shipped 424,000 tons of western Canadian wheat through the port of Churchill during the 2008 shipping season. The first wheat left port on August 8, and the last of 15 freighters left on October 20. Exporting prairie wheat through Churchill saves Canadian farmers money on transportation in terms of rail-freight costs and avoiding
Saint Lawrence Seaway charges, but the operating profits to the private company operating the port were highly dependent on the
monopoly rates and rules implemented by the CWB. The port of Churchill exported of grain in 1977, in 2007, and in 2009. Shipments continued to decline, falling to in 2012 and plummeting to in 2015. Port operations ceased in August 2016. OmniTRAX then closed the rail-line and port, citing profitability of the operations. It then entered into initial talks to sell the port and rail-line to a local indigenous consortium of Manitoba First Nations, Missinippi Rail Consortium. Under the new ownership of the Arctic Gateway Group, the port completed the loading of its first grain ship on September 7, 2019. It was announced on September 16 that the port has begun loading a second ship.
Alternatives to grain The government of
Manitoba proposed in 2010 that the Port of Churchill could serve as the North American terminus of an
Arctic Bridge shipping service to
Murmansk in Northern
Russia. Containers from inland China and central Asia could potentially be transported to Murmansk by Russian railways, shipped to Churchill, then transported south by rail to major destinations in North America, avoiding existing transport bottlenecks. In 2010, investments to upgrade the port to "facilitating export options and the flow of two-way trade with other Northern ports" were made, as described in the ''Statement on Canada's Arctic Foreign Policy: Exercising : Sovereignty and Promoting Canada's Northern Strategy Abroad'' which is launched on August 20, 2010. Canada is the world's
fourth-largest oil exporter, and the Port of Churchill has an oil-handling system. In 2013, the port's previous owner had proposed a $2 million upgrade to this system, which would have given additional competitive advantage to Canada's oil export industry. A trial-run to export of 330,000 bbl of light-sweet crude was proposed at that time. However, by 2014 the plan had been scrapped. On July 9, 2019, the port began supplying cargo to ships on their way to resupply northern communities. In 2025, the Churchill Port Plus project was proposed before the federal government. The project included upgrading the port's capacity for cargo and adding new LNG terminal. == Marketing efforts==