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SYDNEY, N.S. — Barry Sheehy believes Novaporte’s move away from its focus on a container terminal and more toward offshore wind energy makes more sense.
“We’re on our way,” said Sheehy, an author, historian, veteran and businessman involved with Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP) and Novaporte, the transportation, logistics and green energy development group headed up by chief executive Albert Barbusci.
“The energy is high. We got the right partners; we have the leadership support from the First Nations.
“There were forces that seemed to be against us for a while, but we were able to overcome them.”
Sheehy, making an appearance at the Port Days conference on Thursday at the Joan Harriss Cruise Pavilion’s Pittman Hall, said the container terminal project is still in Novaporte’s future plans. The firm had a years-old exclusivity agreement with the Cape Breton Regional Municipality to market port development on a piece of municipal-owned land near Sydport.
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Container port project stalled
But since 2020, that project has stalled.
Reports also surfaced years back that one of the container port’s investors, Bridging Finance of Toronto, had run into financial woes, according to Reuters and the National Post, and led to an Ontario court placing the investment management firm in receivership. That prompted a still-ongoing investigation from the Ontario Securities Commission, which released a damning report in 2022 alleging the firm’s senior executives mismanaged funds and failed to disclose conflicts of interest, the Financial Post reported.
Though Sheehy wouldn’t get into details on that issue, he said the bigger holdup has been the lack of rail activity. Lines into the CBRM have been dormant since 2015 — and the proposed container terminal project would rely on a need for rail to get the project moving forward.
Still, Sheehy said he remains hopeful that “the container port is going to happen. We just need to get rail in place. Rail was never supposed to be our problem but it ended up being our problem.
“We will eventually solve rail, but it’s just taking longer than expected. But now we’re coming out of the gate with wind because that’s where the doors opened.”
Port Days
Sheehy joined some 260 registered industry delegates, as well as business leaders and several municipal council members who took in Thursday’s Port Days proceedings, which included brief addresses from a pair of ports associations, a ports and marine project firm, outgoing Port of Sydney CEO Marlene Usher (who wraps up her work June 16), a state of the maritime industry report and an energy panel moderated by Cape Breton Partnership president and CEO Tyler Mattheis.
As the Cape Breton Post reported Thursday, Port Days’ focal point revolved around offshore wind energy — highlighted by a panel-style keynote interview, moderated by Novaporte’s vice-president of operations and corporate development Kathleen Yurchesyn and featuring Barbusci, Brian Sørensen, Blue Water Shipping’s global category head for wind and port service, and Membertou Chief Terry Paul.
All are combining their leadership skills toward setting up an offshore wind marshalling project, first announced back on March 23 in Membertou.
‘Does this require rail?’
As Barbusci told delegates Thursday, the offshore wind marshalling project started with returning a phone call to a U.S. developer, who expressed that offshore wind developers were looking for opportunities to grow outside the states.
“At one point, I just paused him and asked, ‘Does this require rail?’ And he said, ‘No, it doesn’t,’” Barbusci said. “So I said, ‘Well, just keep on talking.’”
“Albert was on a plane within 72 hours of that phone call. He was on his way to Denmark. You have to seize that opportunity when it’s there,” said Sheehy.
“And look at where we are now. Some of the forces that were obstacles before have been now removed.”
Ian Nathanson is a multimedia reporter at the Cape Breton Post. Follow him on Twitter at @CBPost_Ian.