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The company, which is private, won't say how much money it is making in Churchill, but it was estimated to have moved more than 500,000 tons of grain through the port in 2007.
Managing director Michael Ogborn said climate change was not something the company thought about in 1997.
"But over the last 10 years we saw a lengthening of the season, which appears to be related to global warming," Ogborn said. "We see the trend continuing."
Just a few years ago, reports said it would take 100 years for the ice to melt, but recent studies say it could happen in 10-15 years, and the United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark and Norway have been rushing to stake their claims in the Arctic.
Norway and Russia have issues in the Barents Sea; the U.S. and Russia in Beaufort Sea; the U.S. and Canada over rights to the Northwest Passage; and even Alaska and Canada's Yukon province over their offshore boundary.
Canada, Russia and Denmark are seeking to claim waters all the way up to the North Pole, saying the seabed is part of their continental shelf under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Norway wants to extend its claims on the same basis, although not all the way to the pole.
Canada says the Northwest Passage is its territory, a claim the United States hotly disputes, insisting the waters are neutral. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has pledged to put military icebreakers in the frigid waters "to assert our sovereignty and take action to protect our territorial integrity."
Politics aside, there are environmental concerns. Apart from the risk of oil spills, more vessels could carry alien organisms into the Northwest Passage, posing a risk to indigenous life forms.
The Arctic melt has also been intensifying competition over dwindling fishing stocks.
Fish stocks essential to some regions appear to be moving to colder waters, and thus into another country's fishing grounds. Russian and Norwegian fishermen already report catching salmon much farther north than is normal.
"It is potentially very dramatic for fish stocks. They could move toward the North Pole, which would make sovereignty very unclear," said Dag Vongraven, an environmental expert at the Norwegian Polar Institute.
Russia contests Norway's claims to fish-rich waters around the Arctic Svalbard Islands, and has even sent warships there to underscore its discontent with the Norwegian Coast Guard boarding Russian trawlers there.
"Even though they say it is about fish, it is really about oil," said Jensen, the consultant in Hammerfest.
In 2004, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the sovereignty issue "a serious, competitive battle" that "will unfold more and more fiercely."
With all the squabbling over ownership, Tristan Pearce, a research associate at the University of Guelph's Global Environmental Change Group in Canada, reminded Arctic nations of who got there first: indigenous peoples like the Inuits and the Sami.
"Everybody is talking about the potential for minerals, diamonds, oil and gas, but we mustn't forget that people live there, all the way across the Arctic," he said. "They've always been there and they have a major role to play."
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