INDUSTRY INSIGHT
The journey to success Ron Brinkhurst
President, Tidal Transport & Trading Ltd. Photo by Dave Roels (www.daveroels.com)
The journey from superintendent to president has been fraught with “sleepless nights and hair falling out” but, as Ron describes, it started with one piece of business...
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on Brinkhurst, President of Tidal Transport & Trading Ltd., started the company with one client in 1999. Seventeen years later, along with partners Clay Petroff and Paul Gallant, Ron has grown Tidal into a powerhouse that touches on numerous facets of the marine industry along the West Coast of North America. The journey from superintendent to president has been fraught with “sleepless nights and hair falling out” but, as Ron describes, it started with one piece of business which led to another and then another until we arrive at the present day to find a local B.C. success story. BCSN: Let’s first look at how you started Tidal Transport and list the companies that currently fall under the Tidal Transport banner. RB: Growing up in North Burnaby, the Vancouver waterfront provided a
12 BC Shipping News June 2016
lot of job opportunities and there were quite a few from the neighbourhood who went to work as longshoremen and in other areas of the industry. I began working with Empire Stevedoring at Vanterm in 1984. This was just prior to EXPO 86 and Empire needed someone to co-ordinate the inbound movement of equipment and goods from vessel to terminal and on to the EXPO site. I initially focused on containers and project cargoes in various areas of Vanterm’s terminal operations. Over the next 15 years, I worked in the general stevedoring division, concentrating on break bulk, especially forest products, including logs, but also automobiles and bulk commodities such as phosrock and grain as well as cruise vessel services. It was a great company made up of dedicated people with a wealth of experience. I was fortunate to have had
many mentors and when Empire (soon to be renamed Terminals Systems Inc. and now Global Container Terminals) decided to exit the general stevedoring business in 1999, I had the choice to either go to work for a competitor or start something on my own. I had a key log account that encouraged me to consider it and there were some supercargo opportunities so I decided to give it a shot. In the early days, our focus was supercargo services for companies like Westwood, Star, Gearbulk, and Saga, primarily for export raw log stevedoring. We started out of the gate with one log account and quickly grew to exclusively manage 100 per cent of the provincial stevedoring of raw logs to deepsea vessels. This continues as our single largest volume commodity and revenue source. In terms of the roster of companies under Tidal, we established Tidal USA in 2005 with expanded port captain and vessel hold cleaning services. We acquired Mitchell Fothergill Marine Surveyors in 2007, Tidal Coast Terminals and Tymac both in 2008, and most recently in April 2015, CT Terminals, our Coast