Georgia Kaolin Returns

Hi all. Last night's POED had several Thiele Kaolin Slurry cars mixed in.
Maine's paper mills stopped using georgia Kaolin in the late 90s as it became uneconomical.
Wonder if more is to come.

Right now the mills still get a big portion of their Kaolin from Brazil. It's discharged at the Sprague terminal in South Portland, but with CSX in town, it may make sense to use more domestic kaolin where possible.

I'm no expert but I believe there's some type of difference between Georgia Kaolin and Brazil Kaolin that has an impact on paper making.

Brazilian Kaolin is brighter and cuts down on the amount of TIO2 required in the paper making process.

Just a educated guess. I wonder if CSXT marketing team had made a offer the mills couldn't refuse with a single shipping agreement for Kaolin. Cheaper bulk rate vs the VRS/PAS/PAR routing from OMYA.

There has also been slurry coming out of Searsport which has been going west on Pan Am recently. I am not sure what mill is taking the cars, but if I were to guess its Hinkley. Most of the product which comes into Searsport goes to Saint John for Irving but I have seen slurry tanks go west during the CMQ days.

Perhaps the cost / availability of shipping from Brazil has changed.

That's interesting about the Searsport comment. I couldn't check the cars to see if they were loads or empties, as it was dark when I spotted them.

Yes price very well Could have changed.

The kaolin that arrives in Portland and Searsport arrives on the same ship. The bulker Tanja Loads kaolin in Brazil and then does a fairly regular circuit to unload product in Portland, Searsport and Port Hawkesbury (and sometimes Trois-Rivières)
I don't know why kaolin bound for Sappi would go through Searsport rather than Portland.

The gray Thiele tanks have been coming in for 6+ months now… they go as far as Saint John NB in groups of 3 or 4. Also see them going up to Rumford/Jay

Here's a screen grab from the Roanoke live cam of NS 11Z out of Binghamton heading into the Roanoke yard Wednesday evening 3/16/22 around 10pm with three gray Thiele tanks ahead of a loaded Irving centerbeam (and there were 2 more Thieles) a few cars later).

The 2 largest kaolin shippers to Maine from Georgia can only get north via NS. It was NS who priced themselves out of the business years ago and lost out to the Brazilian clay via Portland. So it will be interesting to see how CSX wants to handle clay going forward. If they protect the Portland import operation they could very well knock NS off the business again.

I wonder if there's additional import demand for Kaolin / clay slurry that CSX may want to cultivate through Portland. The Sprague terminal is well suited for ship-to-rail clay transloads.