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TORONTO — In late September, a Shanghai-bound cargo ship left the port of Seattle bearing containers stuffed with drums of uranium concentrate dug from a Saskatchewan mine, the first ever shipment of Canadian-sourced uranium concentrate to China.
For Cameco Corp., the Saskatoon-based mining giant behind the shipment, the demand from China, the world’s fastest-growing nuclear energy market, has translated into two agreements struck in 2010. Those deals, combined with subsequent accords, are worth about $3-billion.
Increasing shipments to Asia, such as Cameco’s, helped push the prairie province’s exports to $32.6-billion earlier this year, surpassing British Columbia for the first time, according to Statistics Canada. That made Saskatchewan Canada’s fourth-largest provincial exporter.
Premier Brad Wall, who was in Toronto on Monday to speak to a business lunch at the Shangri-La hotel, used Cameco as an example and said much of the province’s success is a result of seeking out emerging markets and cultivating ties with countries such as China, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
Mr. Wall said he’s now taking that message to the federal government, which he pointed out has not concluded any free-trade agreements in Asia.
“If you like the EU deal, you’re really gonna like a deal with Asia,” Mr. Wall said of the recent deal Ottawa signed in Brussels, adding: “We need to do better.”
Mr. Wall, pointing out that Asia’s economic and population growth exceeds Europe’s, said it is crucial to get high-level politicians out to the faster-growing markets to help Canada’s companies compete. For Cameco, October’s shipment of uranium concentrate was only made possible under a newly negotiated additional protocol to the Canada-China Nuclear Co-operation Agreement, which was announced last year.
“We’re ramping up production,” said Cameco spokesman Rob Gereghty, who added that China has 28 nuclear reactors under construction and plans to build more than 100 reactors over the next 20 years. “We’re seeing a demand for that production.”
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