PORTLAND, Maine — The owner of the B&M baked bean plant in Portland’s East Deering neighborhood has offered to pay $111,529 to keep open the rail line that delivers its beans from the Midwest and Manitoba, Canada.
B&G Foods, which owns the bean plant, filed the offer last week, stating that it is working with the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad Co. on final details of a subsidy arrangement.
Early this year, the railroad asked federal regulators to shut down the 24-mile line from Auburn to Portland because the bean plant has been the line’s only customer since 2006.
“[St. Lawrence and Atlantic’s] efforts to market the line for additional business have been unsuccessful, and B&M Foods remains the only active customer on the line,” the railroad’s attorney wrote in the shutdown request last year.
The request left the bean factory with the option of subsidizing that portion of the rail line, or using a costlier option of having trucks transport its beans. Earlier this year, B&G told the railroad shipping its beans by truck would mean a six-figure increase in transportation costs over shipping by rail. The filings kept specific cost and rate data confidential.
The bean factory received nearly all of its beans by rail in 2012 and 2013, totaling several millions of pounds aboard about 30 shipments per year, according to the filings.
B&G submitted its subsidy offer to the federal Surface Transportation Board by a Nov. 5 deadline, set by the federal agency. The board must issue a decision on whether it finds the proposed subsidy sufficient to require the railroad to continue operating that line.
The company is a subsidiary of the publicly traded B&G Foods, Inc., based in New Jersey.