The terminal, with more than 30,000 tonnes of storage and 104 railway car capacity, was up and running in June.

Viterra officials heralded the new facility as being modern, efficient, and environmentally friendly.

Brent Lindsay, market service manager, noted that loaded trucks enter through a single driveway where a probe assesses grain quality.

"That makes this facility faster because we know time is money for (producers)," he said. "(They) don't want to sit in driveways, they want to be in the field, they want to be on the road."

The process is so fast it has the capacity to load about 22 rail cars an hour at maximum capacity, Lindsay said.

"To put that in perspective, in a perfect world on a perfect day… we could load this 104-car capacity in about five hours," Lindsay said. "The plant I used to work in Spirit River, it would take me about 18 hours to load about 10% of that."

The terminal's capacity is the equivalent of more than one million bushels.

Lindsay pointed out the facility was constructed to meet current environmental standards including a dust collection system that returns all dust back to the stream of the grain.

"There is no exhaust into the atmosphere at this plant in any area, except for the rail car spout that goes into the car – and even that has three spouts on it to draw the dust."

In the middle of a crowd of Viterra employees, customers, and producers who were on hand for Thursday's ceremony, Sexsmith Mayor Claude Lagace listened intently as each speaker described the impact the facility will have on the region.