MONTREAL, QUÉBEC, CANADA — The Canadian National Railway (CN) for the thirteenth consecutive month has set a record by shipping more than 2.95 million tonnes of Canadian grain and processed grain products via carload in March 2021.

This exceeds the previous record of 2.74 million tonnes set in March 2020 and 19% ahead of the three-year average of 2.47 million tonnes.

During the first quarter of 2021, CN moved 8.2 million tonnes of Canadian grain, exceeding the previous first quarter record of seven million tonnes established in 2017 and over 25% higher than the three-year average of 6.5 million tonnes. So far, during the 2020-21 crop year, CN has moved 22.7 million tonnes of Canadian grain. This is an increase of 19% compared to the previous year to-date record of 19.1 million tonnes established in the 2018-19 crop year.

“Since the beginning of 2021, Canadian grain farmers, along with all of our supply chain partners, have worked closely with CN’s railroaders to deliver record grain performance despite the pandemic and the very difficult operating conditions we faced in February,” said James Cairns, senior vice president, rail centric supply chain of CN. “We are proud of these record results as we also respond to record demand for the movement of other commodities, such as potash, overseas and domestic intermodal, forest products, and propane.

“I want to personally thank CN railroaders and our agri-food supply chain partners for successfully delivering another record month of grain movement while keeping pace with higher than previous year’s overall traffic levels on CN's network.”

CN’s containerized grain shipments direct from western Canada are also on record pace, approaching 800,000 tonnes crop year to-date, in addition to the tonnage shipped from eastern Canada.