The St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corp. has modified its toll schedule for the 2013 navigation season, which includes a 3 percent toll increase, following a five-year freeze on rates.
The schedule features a new business incentive program, which offers a 20 percent discount on cargo tolls for three seasons for any commodity, origin or destination combinations approved by the SLSMC as being a new business; a volume rebate incentive program, which offers a 10 percent reduction on cargo tolls for the incremental volume increase over the highest volume achieved by a shipper or receiver over the previous five years; and a service incentive program, which offers an additional 20 percent discount on cargo tolls for new business export cargo for a regular service in the Great Lakes. It also included the pending introduction of a new gateway incentive.
"We continue to invest in the renewal of the seaway infrastructure so as to provide the high reliability users have become accustomed to,"said Terence Bowles, president and CEO of SLSMC, in a written statement.
More than 39 million metric tons of cargo moved through the St. Lawrence Seaway in 2012, a 4 percent increase in volume.