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Yesterday, the Canadian government announced it will provide up to $15.6 million to help fund infrastructure improvements at the Port of Montreal and upgrades St. Lawrence Channel navigation from Quebec City to Montreal. The projects are slated for completion by March 2014.

The port is approaching its maximum capacity of 1.6 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs). To accommodate forecasted growth from 2012 to 2017, avoid congestion and better meet users' needs, the port must optimize and expand its container-handling areas, government officials said in a prepared statement.
 
To be funded by the federal government and Montreal Port Authority, port improvements will be completed in two phases. The first one calls for modernizing a terminal to increase capacity by about 50,000 TEUs. Work calls for relocating offices, a longshoremen's room, security offices and a workshop to create more space for container handling.

The second phase involves reconfiguring space used to handle and store general merchandise and bulk cargo into a container handling area to boost capacity by about 150,000 TEUs. Work also includes the demolition of buildings and adjacent trackwork. The port is served by CN and Canadian Pacific.

"The federal government's financial investment in our infrastructure will significantly help address the current and future growth of the Port of Montreal's container sector,” said Sylvie Vachon,  president and chief executive officer of the Montreal Port Authority. “Upon completion … we will have increased the port's overall container handling capacity by 12.5 percent, reaching 1.8 million [TEUs].”