INTERMODAL SOUTH AMERICA NEWS
INTERMODAL SOUTH AMERICA: BACK IN BUSINESS The Intermodal South America (ISA) trade show returned to the stage this year, after a three-year absence and exceeded all expectations, according to the organisers as well as dozens of attendees interviewed by Port Strategy. Hermano do Amaral Pinto Junior, Business Director for Informa markets Brazil, said that around 22,000 people attended the 26th edition of ISA which, despite hosting almost no participants from China [which usually make up around 20% of the Expo], was only around 34 per cent less than the record number of 36,000 back in 2019. “Up until the week before we only had 12,000 paid registrations so we were somewhat worried,” said Pinto, “but then we had 1000s of new registrations at the last minute, much to our relief. During the absence of a physical Intermodal show many people, and especially freight forwarders, have been very supportive of our efforts to bring this event back. People have been so grateful and happy to be together again, and we have provided the opportunity for contacts and deals to be made and for the government to outline its privatisation and infrastructure plans, such as the Green Line project.” The keynote speech at the IM came from Tarcisio Gomes de Freitas, the Infrastructure Minister, who is pushing hard a privatisation programme in the transport sector (especially ports and port authorities: see preceding articles). ““Brazil will increasingly become a multimodal country, more and more efficient from a logistical point of view,” he confidently told those gathered. “We expect participation of the rail mode of transport to grow from 20 to 40 per cent by the year 2035.” Running concurrently with ISA was the 25th National Conference on Logistics which also focussed on logistics developments in Brazil. Several attendees expressed their “absolute delight” that ISA
was up and running again as it gave them a “one shop stop” to see dozens of clients face to face after the three-year hiatus, as “Zoom meetings are just not the same”. Marcelo Goncalves, the Kalmar director for Latin America Mobile Equipment Sales, further emphasised this. “This trade show is mostly for renewing
8 Intermodal South America back in business after a two-year absence
contacts and meeting people face-to-face. Most of our customers are here and they are keen to talk about their future plans and if Reporto is brought back, as we expect, then more orders will be made,” he told Port Strategy at the show.
APMT Itajai Develops the Ro-Ro Option… APM Terminals Itajai, which has been losing container volume and market share to Portonave, its rival across the River Itajai Acu, and also to Porto Itapoa, some 90 km away, is turning to ro-ro as a way of bolstering its bottom line. The Florida Highway, operated by K Line, called at the south Brazilian terminal in mid-March, and it unloaded 460 high value BMW cars, the first in Itajai for nearly three years.
“We now have a monthly service from K Line and we are going to see more and more general cargo at our terminal this year,” said Aristides Junior, the CEO for APMT Itajai. APM Itajai handled 528,000TEU in 2021, down 4.5 per cent from the 553,000TEU total in 2020. In the first two months of this year it handled just 58,000TEU, down 26.3 per cent from the 78,812TEU for same period in 2021.
Portonave Plots A Growth Path On the other side of the River Itajai-Acu, the Portonave terminal, which now sits in the MSC/TIL portfolio, highlights its recent progress. It achieved a 1.1 million TEU throughput in 2021, a notable 29 per cent increase. Talking to Port Strategy at the company’s stand at the Intermodal South America trade show, Rodrigo Lopes, Commercial Manager, Portonave, told us that last year was an outstanding one mainly because of its strategy of targeting new business from Sao Paulo (Brazil’s financial and industrial heartland), where many shippers had been having problems with congestion out of the port of Santos.
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“The congestion in Santos has played into our hands for sure,” said Lopes. “We brought in a lot of frozen meat, auto parts, CKDs and fruit exporters [oranges and lemons mainly] from the Sao Paulo region. This year, however, we are only forecasting an increase of 5.8 per cent as we are facing our own capacity restrictions.” If not for these restrictions Lopes believes Portonave could post another increase of between 15 and 20 per cent. He notes, however, that with new adjacent land bought measures were now being taken to double terminal capacity to well over 2m TEU per annum by the year 2026.
BRIEFS IMETAME launch
Yet another new port project, specialising in containers but including general cargo, dry and liquid bulk facilities, was launched at Intermodal South America. Imetame Porto Aracruz, located only 55 miles from the port of Vitoria, splashed out on its own sizeable stand to launch its arrival on the port scene and reports it is constructing a breakwater for the new deep-water port with container operations scheduled to start in 2024.
Pecem JV
The Pecem Industrial and Port Complex and Stolthaven Terminals (part of the Stolt-Nielsen group) are setting up a joint venture with the Port of Rotterdam, for a new storage terminal in the port of Pecem to handle green hydrogen and associated products. Located in the north of Brazil, Pecem is seen to offer great potential for generating wind and solar energy.
Diversification
Ecoporto in Santos (which used to handle some 500,000TEU back in 2013 but now just a very small box volume) has become a leader in LCL cargoes and warehousing and hosts regular break bulk calls from Grimaldi ships. Similarly, DP World, Santos has recently added handling cellulose in breakbulk vessels to its operations.
Bulk Alternative
Worldwide container shortages, accentuated in Brazil, have led the Ponta do Felix private port in Antonina (part of the Paranagua port complex) to switch to exporting wood pellets in bulk rather than in boxes. The increased cost of container transportation was also a catalyst to this course of action.
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