Portland Waterfront Rail Ops (Yard 8, Intermodal, etc)

What's interesting about Lincoln is that while it's not ideal for westbound running on Pan Am, it's only thirteen miles from the NBSR interchange at Mattawamkeag, giving them a relatively short trip over Pan Am before heading east or west to Canada.

I was wondering if they would load containers in Lincoln (on rails). Interesting possibility. Perhaps not realistic but interesting nonetheless.

The proximity to Mattawamkeag had crossed my mind too. (And also the idea that maybe someone other than PAR might be operating the Mattawamkeag-to-NMJ line at some point in the not so distant future.)

Poland Spring water is a regional brand of Nestle Waters North America. There current marketing scheme is distributing the regional brands only in the region they are bottled. This being the case, it seems that the product would be shipped south to New England / New York markets and not North / West outside of these markets.
The exception to this would be if the plant bottled their global brand NPL. This could be shipped anywhere in North America.
As KSmitty mentioned above, this decision to look for new sources surely has at least something to do with this past summers drought. Cutting back production or idling a bottling plant is not something taken lightly. They could even be trying to secure new water rights farther north with the intent of trucking (or by rail - tank car?) the water to one of their existing bottling plants.

I doubt they would ship water in tank cars. Production depends on a constant supply of water, and none of the plants are set up for rail. If they were to use rail, they would need a constant supply, constant switching, and a supply of very clean tank cars.

"Very clean" tank cars is an understatement. I'd imagine PS would require stainless tank shells, which are as scarce as hen's teeth.

Is the possibility of loading intermodal containers directly at a bottling facility, placing them in well cars and spotting them for pickup on a siding really that far fetched?

Mikejf wrote:I doubt they would ship water in tank cars. Production depends on a constant supply of water, and none of the plants are set up for rail. If they were to use rail, they would need a constant supply, constant switching, and a supply of very clean tank cars.

Is there anywhere other than potentially Framingham that have rail?

gokeefe wrote:Is the possibility of loading intermodal containers directly at a bottling facility, placing them in well cars and spotting them for pickup on a siding really that far fetched?

Much much cheaper to use an existing terminal. Intermodal is a space consuming method. So you need acres of land paved for staging and loading, or a near constant switching to load a 5 pack at a time...
Then there is the fact you still need a fleet of chassis to move containers around the yard, accompanied by a few tractors and drivers.
Gotta by a new packer. Recent documents from the Portland project should indicate how much the SOM paid for the new packer there. Pretty sure you're looking at 100K+.
And if it's an in house oparation run by PS they gotta pay the terminal staff. Terminals are the most expensive part of an intermodal operation. Staffing, equipment and land use.

Say they built a plant in Lincoln. 1 drivery should roundtrip dray 3 trailers a shift to Waterville, you pay a few more drivers. You let someone else pay the property tax, terminal staff salary, equipment purchase, maintenance and since it's an existing service at an established facility you don't have to pay for a switch crew at 100+ bucks an hour. And on top of that all, you get better service because track speeds are better.

The idea of loading containers at a facility directly isn't crazy operationaly. But economically it's not viable or you would see every paper mill doing it already.

KSmitty wrote:The idea of loading containers at a facility directly isn't crazy operationaly. But economically it's not viable or you would see every paper mill doing it already.

Very well made point. Thank you.

In particular the discussions of economies of scale using intermodal in Waterville made a lot of sense to me as well. The more they can push through an existing terminal the better. Waterville still has plenty of available capacity of course so no reason not to use it.

One of the things I've learned from my time serving on a municipal planning board is that stormwater management adds huge costs — huge — to the price tag of new construction. And the more pavement you have, the higher those stormwater management costs will be. So if Nestle can minimize the amount of pavement at the new facility, they save more money than just the cost of the pavement itself. And that's especially true if the facility is near an important water source, which of course it would be.

Even if its water rights only & not a new bottling plant, they could just truck the water to one of their existing plants. I imagine highway congestion is not much of an issue in northern Maine.

Not a shot. The amount of water they would be trucking would be astronomical.

NWNA does have other bottling plants in the US that are indeed supplied by a never ending convoy of tanker trucks. There are not bottling plants at every spring water source. This water is brought from the source by truck in many cases. Keep in mind that there is a difference between bottled water & spring water. Water labeled as spring water will list its source springs on the label. Purified water is often just filtered municipal water that is piped into the bottling plant.

Yes but the articles specifically say they want a new plant near new anchor and feeder springs. They aren't looking to truck hundreds of miles to existing bottling plants.